Ihl     I! 


w 

■ill 

;i  ill 


[*     OCT  !  1  1.903^o'*l 


Division     BSULO 

.  MIS 
Section      copy   I 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH 


THREE  LECTURES  ON  THE  REINECKER 

FOUNDATION    DELIVERED    AT    THE 

VIRGINIA    THEOLOGICAL    SEMINARY 

IN  DECEMBER,  1905. 


By  the  same  Author: 

The  Gospel  in  the  Christian  Year 
Longmans,  Green,  and  Co. 


Present  Day  Problems  of  Christian  Thought 

Christ  and  Modern  Unbelief 
Thos.  Whittaker 


THE  PROBLEM 
OF  THE  PENTATEUCH 

AN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE 
RESULTS  OF  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM 


^ 


RANDOLPH  H.  McKIM,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

RECTOR  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  EPH'HANY,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 
WITH    A   FOREWORD    BY 

THE  DEAN  OF  CANTERBURY 


0^  yhp  <Te<TO(j)L<rix4voi%  fiMois  i^aKoXovd-^cravrei 


LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND   CO, 

91  AND  93  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON  AND  BOMBAY 

1906 


Copyright  1906 
By  U.  H.  McKim 


The  Plimpton  Press  Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


Co 
HENRY  WAGE,  D.D.,  DEAN  OF  CANTERBURY 

THESE  LECTURES  ARE  DEDICATED 

AS  AN  EXPRESSION  OF  HIGH  PERSONAL  REGARD 

AND  IN  GRATEFUL  RECOGNITION 

OF  HIS  IMPORTANT  SERVICES 

TO  CHRISTIAN  SCHOLARSHIP 


CONTENTS 


Foreword  xiii 

Introduction •     •         1 

The  author  follows  the  great  critics  in  appealing 
the  critical  controversy  to  the  jury  of  plain  men.  He 
writes  as  one  of  the  jury.  The  trend  of  modern  criti- 
cism toward  destructive  conclusions,  from  Eichhom 
to  Wellhausen.  Perilous  reaction  in  our  generation. 
The  new  views  becoming  traditional.  Signs  of  this 
radical  trend.  The  Encyclopsedia  Biblica.  Cheyne's 
"  Bible  Problems."  Intolerant  spirit  of  the  negative 
school.  Examples  of  this.  Its  assvunptions;  its  one- 
sided method;  its  subjective  standards.  Examples  of 
this.  Arbitrary  dealing  with  witnesses.  The  vital 
issue  in  this  discussion  is  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
books.  Close  connection  between  literary  and  his- 
torical criticism.  Opinion  of  Prof.  Lotz  in  confirma- 
tion. Prof.  Kirkpatrick's  view  revolutionizes  concep- 
tion of  Jewish  history.  The  "skeleton"  view  of 
Driver  and  Ottley.  Substantial  agreement  with  Well- 
hausen. Views  of  the  moderate  school  tell  against 
trustworthiness  of  Old  Testament.  Real  issue  be- 
tween them  and  Wace  and  Lotz  and  Hommel  and 
Robertson.  Dilhnann's  dissent  from  Wellhausen. 
Dr.  Driver's  claim  of  a  consensus  not  established. 
Dillmann's  true  position.  Driver  and  Robertson  fun- 
damentally disagreed.  The  former's  contention  shown 
to  be  ill  founded.  Wellhausen's  position:  Holds  the 
Pentateuch    unhistorical,    and    Abraham    an    artistic 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

creation.  His  view  of  date  and  structure  of  Deute- 
ronomy; of  the  Priestly  Code.  Both  considered  unhis- 
torical.  In  what  sense  Wellhausen  acknowledges 
Moses  the  founder  of  the  Torah.  The  ancient  law,  in 
his  view,  not  written  but  oral  in  form;  pentateuchal 
legislation  codified  a  thousand  years  later.  The 
writers  of  P  completely  altered  the  ancient  history. 
Men  of  Ezekiel  school  wrote  a  thin,  fictitious  history. 
The  Tabernacle,  Aaron's  consecration,  the  Day  of 
Atonement,  all  fictions.  Attempt  to  show  virtual  agree- 
ment between  Hommel  and  Wellhausen;  its  failure. 
Hommel  formerly  a  disciple  of  Wellhausen.  Also, 
Orelli,  Klostermann,  and  others.  Margohouth's  posi- 
tion: His  book  "Lines  of  Defence"  not  contradicted  by 
liis  article  on  "Language."  The  really  vital  question 
is  the  trustworthiness  of  the  books  as  records  of  the 
race  and  the  religion.  Dr.  Robertson's  concession  as 
to  the  various  editings  of  the  laws.  The  outlook  in 
BibUcal  criticism.  Recent  reaction  from  Wellhausen's 
views.  Opinion  of  the  Dean  of  Canterbury.  Not 
committed  to  all  the  views  of  authors  quoted.  Adolph 
Harnack's  conclusion  that  New  Testament  Uterature 
is  veracious  and  trustworthy.  Same  result  may  be 
anticipated  for  the  Old  Testament. 

Lecturk  I 37 

The  Higher  Criticism;  its  ancestry,  its  history,  its 
shifting  character.  Wellhausen's  theory;  its  triumphs. 
These  Lectures  directed  against  Wellhausen's  hypoth- 
esis; that  theory  not  a  finality.  The  fate  of  Christian 
Baur  suggestive  of  the  fate  that  may  overtake  Julius 
Wellhausei- .  Is  "  development  hypothesis  "  philosophi- 
cally akin  to  the  Tubingen  theory  ?  Opinion  of  Prof. 
Van  Oettingen  and  of  Dr.  Wright.  Dr.  Briggs's  chal- 
lenge answered.  Real  issue  between  Wellhausen  and 
Klostermann.     Ebb  of  the  wave  of  historical  skepti- 


CONTENTS  ix 

PAGE 

cism.  Middle  ground  between  the  traditional  view 
and  the  critical  view  of  Wellhausen.  Intolerant  spirit 
of  the  Wellhausen  critics.  Modern  hypothesis  rejected 
by  many  critics.  Wellhausen's  view  of  Deuteronomy 
contested  by  Klostermann.  Principles  and  methods 
of  Higher  Criticism  accepted.  Free  investigation  of 
the  Bible.  Our  debt  to  the  Higher  Criticism;  but 
burden  of  proof  on  those  who  advocate  revolutionary 
ideas.  Attitude  of  mind  in  which  we  should  approach 
the  criticism  of  the  Bible.  Opinion  of  Bishop  Stubbs. 
Prepossessions  behind  conclusions  of  extreme  school. 
Assumptions  against  the  supernatural  and  against 
prediction  of  futiu'e  events.  Positions  of  Kuenen  and 
Wellhausen  and  Ernest  Renan.  Critical  questions 
settled  by  a  jyriori  assumptions.  Scientific  accuracy 
of  criticism  distm-bed  by  naturahstic  bias.  Opinion  of 
Prof.  G.  T.  Ladd.  These  Lectures  addressed  to 
Christian  students.  Our  criticism  should  start  from 
the  basis  of  the  New  Testament.  Some  grievous  mis- 
takes of  the  modern  school  of  critics:  (1)  that  the  age 
of  Moses  was  not  a  literary  age;  (2)  that  Genesis  xiv 
was  unhistorical  —  the  invention  of  a  later  age;  (3) 
that  the  Cairene  Ecclesiasticus  was  of  date  B.C.  200, 
an  error  of  1200  years.  Judgment  of  some  great 
scholars  upon  the  critical  scholarship  of  our  day :  Prof. 
Ramsay,  Bishop  Lightfoot.  Opinion  of  Prof.  Sayce 
and  Dr.  Hommel  on  the  modem  theory.  Wilhelm 
Moller's  work.  Dr.  James  Robertson  on  the  modem 
critical  theory.  Opinion  of  Dr.  Klostermann.  Dis- 
agreement among  the  critics.  Dr.  Driver's  claim  for 
a  consensus.  Opinion  of  Dr.  A.  B.  Bruce  in  rebuttal. 
The  "results"  lacking  in  harmony.  Examples.  The 
critics  differ  on  the  historicity  of  the  Pentateuch;  on 
revelation,  on  origin  of  the  Jewish  religion,  on  the 
structure  of  the  Priestly  Code.  These  considerations 
free  the  mind  to  examine  the  soundness  of  alleged 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

results.    Our  appeal  is  to  reason  against  authority. 
The  warning  of  Lightfoot. 

LECnXTRE  II         71 

Limitations  of  my  subject:  Criticism  directed  solely 
to  the  Graf-Wellhauseu  hypothesis.  Compilation  of 
Priestly  Code  from  ancient  documents  not  challenged. 
Again,  the  documentary  hj^pothesis  is  not  here  chal- 
lenged, nor  the  Mosaic  authorship  insisted  upon  as 
essential.  The  use  of  allegory  legitimate.  View  of 
Gregory  of  Nyssa.  These  questions  not  involved 
in  the  discussion.  Sketch  of  the  analysis  of  the 
Pentateuch  enunciated  by  Graf-Wellhausen  school. 
Date  and  structure  of  J,  E,  D,  and  P.  Twenty- 
six  redactors  alleged.  Impossibility  of  such  a  piece 
of  literary  anatomy.  Milman's  Critique  of  Ewald. 
Enormous  antecedent  improbability  of  above  analysis. 
Illustrated  by  story  of  Joseph.  Infinitesimally  spht  up 
by  critics.  Literary  improbability  of  theory.  Critics 
intoxicated  by  philology.  Propositions  involved  in 
the  hypothesis:  (1)  Law  later  than  the  Prophets. 
(2)  Deuteronomy  a  fiction.  (3)  Priestly  Code  post- 
exilic.  (4)  Mosaic  theocracy  post-exihc.  (5)  History 
reduced  to  legends.  (6)  Evolutionary  origin  of  the 
religion  of  Israel.  Hypothesis  destroys  authority  of 
the  Pentateuch  and  divine  origin  of  Judaism  and 
trustworthiness  of  the  history.  Revelation  compro- 
mised. Wellhausen  discredits  Jewish  history.  Fe- 
tichism  among  Israelites.  Progressiveness  of  revela- 
tion admitted,  but  reality  of  revelation  maintained. 
Wellhausen  holds  heathen  origin  of  the  religion  of 
Israel.  Pvuenen's  views.  Disastrous  consequences  of 
these  views.  Opinion  of  Bishop  Stubbs.  Relation  to 
the  authority  of  Christ.  The  Kenosis.  Prof.  Nosgen's 
views.  Obligation  to  adhere  to  the  teaching  of  Christ. 
Views   of  Dr.   Wright.       Is   the  theory  estabUshed? 


CONTENTS  xi 

PAGE 

Weighty  adverse  opinion  of  Hommel,  Moller,  Kloster- 
mann.  Hommel's  refutation  of  Wellhausen  under 
eight  heads.  Alleged  consensus  not  justified.  Next 
consider  the  merits  of  the  case.  Reasons  for  rejecting 
the  theory:  (1)  Based  too  largely  on  philology;  history 
and  archaeology  not  sufficiently  regarded.  Views  of 
Dr.  Emil  Reich  and  of  Dean  Milman.  (2)  Rests  on 
two  doubtful  assumptions.  Views  of  Dr.  Jacobs  and 
Canon  Rawlinson.  (3)  Arbitrary  methods  of  this 
author.  Examples  of  this.  Dr.  Driver's  criticism  ex- 
hibits same  fault.  (4)  Philology  turned  against  it  by 
Margoliouth.  Outline  of  his  argument.  (5)  Hommel's 
argument  from  personal  names.  (6)  Contradicted  by 
the  accepted  history.  Wellhausen's  chief  argument, 
correspondence  between  law  and  history,  breaks  down. 
Resume  of  lecture:  The  theory  lacks  the  conclusive 
proof  which  the  case  demands. 

Lectdee  ni 105 

Lines  of  defense:  Historical  considerations  decisive; 
writings  of  Amos,  Hosea,  and  Ezekiel  supply  basis  for 
argmnent  against  the  modern  critical  theory;  parallel 
to  the  argmnent  for  Christianity  from  undisputed  Epis- 
tles of  St.  Paul;  Amos  and  Hosea  presuppose  history 
and  institutions  of  the  Pentateuch;  Hebrew  prophets 
agree  with  the  Hebrew  historians;  Amos  acquainted 
with  the  Pentateuch;  Hosea  alludes  to  written  law; 
many  allusions  to  the  Pentateuch;  arguments  from 
Ezekiel;  the  critics  consider  him  father  of  Judaism, 
but  argument  against  this  conclusive;  cannot  treat  part 
of  Ezekiel's  picture  as  practical  programme  and  other 
part  as  ideal.  Contrast  between  Ezekiel  and  'the 
Priestly  Code:  They  have  different  theological  stand- 
points; they  live  in  different  worlds;  accuracy  of  P 
in  local  references  evidence  of  antiquity;  Ezekiel  well 
acquainted  with    P.    Deuteronomy   problem:    Origin 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

in  reign  of  Josiah  essential  to  Wellhausen's  theory;  this 
view  contested  by  Klostermann,  Hommel,  and  others; 
no  consensus;  theory  based  on  unproved  assumption. 
Deuteronomy  lost  and  forgotten  in  reign  of  Manasseh: 
Inconsistency  of  advocates  of  theory;  theory  destitute 
of  external  support;  argument  from  internal  evidence 
examined;  in  conflict  with  books  of  Samuel  and  Kings; 
how  the  critics  evade  this;  their  logical  inconsistency; 
allege  that  Deuteronomy  legislation  was  never  carried 
out;  Milman's  answer;  Wellhausen's  argument  from 
threefold  correspondence  of  law  and  history;  imsound- 
ness  of  argument  shown.  Argument  in  favor  of  early 
date  of  Deuteronomy:  Mosaic  authorship  an  open  ques- 
tion;  alterations  in  text;  growth  of  legislation  not  denied. 
Historical  truth  the  essential  point;  considerations  which 
sustain  that  view:  (1)  recapitulation  and  codification  of 
laws  natural ;  (2)  traces  of  Deuteronomy  in  reign  of  Hez- 
ekiah  and  Amaziah,  and  in  books  of  Joshua,  Amos, 
and  Hosea  and  Jeremiah;  central  sanctuary  at  Shiloh; 

(3)  ready  acceptance  of  the  book  by  King  and  people; 

(4)  internal  evidence  of  early  date;  difficulty  of  simu- 
lating time  and  manners  of  Mosaic  age;  impossibility 
of  avoiding  anachronisms ;  Dean  Milman's  opinion ;  (5) 
argument  from  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch;  (6)  other 
particulars.  Review  of  argiunent:  Revolutionary  change 
should  be  sustained  by  conclusive  proof.  Resumie  of 
argument  of  Lectures:  Our  view  sustained  by  many 
able  scholars.  Conclusion:  Driver's  assurance  of  se- 
curity of  moral  and  devotional  value  of  Old  Testa- 
ment insufficient;  Strauss's  similar  assurance;  critical 
opinion  grown  more  destructive;  strong  current  of 
belief  against  divinity  of  Christ;  connection  of  destruc- 
tive criticism  with  this;  disintegrating  tendency  of  ad- 
vanced Higher  Criticism;  the  danger  a  very  real  one. 
How  to  meet  it. 


FOREWORD 

I  AM  gratefully  sensible  of  the  honour  conferred 
on  me  by  the  President  of  the  Lower  House  of  the 
General  Convention  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  of  America  in  associating  my  name  with 
these  Lectures;  and  apart  from  that  honour,  it  is 
a  great  pleasure  to  me  to  express  the  cordial  sym- 
pathy and  the  deep  conviction  with  which  I  concur 
in  their  general  argument,  and  in  the  motive  by 
which  they  are  prompted.  It  ought  not  to  be  req- 
uisite for  me  to  express,  in  the  first  place,  my  entire 
acceptance  of  the  duty  and  the  advantage  of  an 
unfettered  application  to  the  Holy  Scriptures  of 
the  processes  of  sound  criticism,  which  are,  after 
all,  only  the  application  to  the  most  important  of 
all  subjects  of  that  faculty  of  reason,  which  we  feel 
bound  to  apply  to  all  other  great  problems  in  life. 
I  fear,  indeed,  it  is  sometimes  insufiiciently  borne 
in  mind  that  reason  has  its  moral  as  well  as  its  purely 
intellectual  function,  and  that  its  operations  are 
sure  to  be  imperfect  if  either  the  one  or  the  other 
is  imperfectly  exerted.  But  no  true  Christian 
scholar  can  speak  or  think  disrespectfully  of  criti- 


xiv  FOREWORD 

cism  in  itself,  or  can  fail  to  desire  its  full  use  in  the 
study  of  the  Scriptures.  It,  is  however,  no  dis- 
paragement to  criticism  to  question  the  conclusions 
of  particular  critics,  and  it  is  this,  and  this  only, 
which  is  done  in  these  Lectures. 

Dr.  McKim  believes,  and  I  cordially  agree  with 
him,  that  the  alleged  results  of  the  current  criticism 
of  the  Old  Testament,  as  put  forward  by  the  school 
which  has  of  late  been  predominant,  are  in  certain 
cardinal  points  unsound,  and,  as  an  inevitable  con- 
sequence, injurious  to  the  Christian  Faith.  It  is 
not  to  the  purely  literary  analysis  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, and  other  works  of  the  Old  Testament,  that 
our  chief  exception  is  taken  —  though,  for  my  o\vn 
part,  I  think  that  this  analysis  has  gone  far  to  refute 
itself  by  the  excessive  elaboration  to  which  it  has 
found  itself  driven.  Our  main  objection  is  to  the 
conclusions  deduced  by  many  critics  as  to  the  un- 
historical  and  untrustworthy  character  of  the  Old 
Testament  narratives.  We  are  plainly  told  that 
the  Patriarchal  narratives  are  not  "historical,"  or, 
in  other  words,  that  we  cannot  rely  upon  the  revela- 
tions recorded  as  made  to  the  Patriarchs  having 
been  really  made.  One  momentous  book,  that  of 
Deuteronomy,  purports  to  record  exhortations  and 
laws  solemnly  given  by  God  through  Moses;  and 
we  are  told,  not  only  that  they  were  never  really 
so  given,  but  that  they  convey  a  materially  erroneous 


FOREWORD  XV 

account  of  the  work  of  Moses,  and  attribute  to  him 
directions  which  he  never  gave.  On  the  whole  it  is 
represented  that  the  general  account  of  the  history 
which  is  conveyed  by  the  plain  statements  of  the 
Pentateuch,  and  which  has  been  consistently  be- 
lieved by  the  Jewish  nation  from  at  least  the  time 
of  Ezra,  is  gravely  erroneous,  and  we  are  told  by 
one  of  the  most  moderate  representatives  of  this 
school  in  England,  that  our  ideas  on  the  subject 
must  be  "  revolutionized." 

What  constitutes  the  gravity  of  such  conclusions 
in  relation  to  the  Christian  faith  is  that  the  tra- 
ditional belief  thus  rejected  was  beyond  question 
that  of  the  first  preachers  of  the  Gospel,  of  St.  Peter, 
St.  Paul,  and  St.  Stephen,  not  to  mention  the  most 
Sacred  Name.  To  myself,  it  appears  that,  apart 
from  all  dogmatic  considerations,  this  fact  alone 
is  sufficient,  on  mere  historical  grounds,  to  show 
the  unsoundness  of  the  current  critical  views.  The 
distance  from  the  time  of  our  Lord  and  the  Apostles 
to  the  time  of  Solomon  is  about  the  same  as  the  dis- 
tance from  our  own  day  to  the  century  preceding 
the  Norman  conquest;  and  we  may  judge  from 
that  comparison  of  the  probability  that  the  whole 
Jewish  nation,  their  learned  class  and  the  people 
at  large,  should,  without  an  apparent  exception, 
have  entertained  radically  erroneous  ideas  as  to  the 
course  which  their  history  had  pursued.     That  a 


x\n  FOREWORD 

whole  nation  should  thus  be  mistaken,  not  as  to  the 
details,  but  as  to  the  substance,  of  its  history,  would 
seem  inconceivable,  especially  as  no  one  doubts 
that  written  records  were  in  use  during  the  whole 
of  the  period  in  question.  But  how  the  unreserved 
acceptance  of  such  error,  and  unqualified  reliance 
upon  it  in  argument,  would  be  consistent  with  the 
character  of  inspiration  in  apostolic  men  would 
appear  at  least  equally  perplexing. 

Of  course  if  the  new  views  were  proved,  we  should 
have  to  accommodate  ourselves  to  them,  at  the  cost 
of  the  reconstruction  of  our  faith  in  vital  points. 
But  it  seems  to  me  sufficiently  shown  in  these  Lec- 
tures that  the  views  have  not  been  proved,  that  the 
arguments  on  which  they  rest  are  defective  in  prin- 
ciple, and  on  broad  issues,  and  not  merely  in  detail, 
that  critics  of  the  first  authority,  and  in  increasing 
number,  reject  them,  and  that  those  who  accept 
them  are  divided  on  points  of  cardinal  importance. 
German  critics  of  the  highest  ability,  and  even 
genius,  led  a  whole  generation  astray  in  the  criti- 
cism of  the  New  Testament,  and  there  seems  no 
presumption  in  deeming  it  possible  that  critics  of 
similar  learning  and  genius  may  have  led  the  next 
generation  astray  on  the  Old  Testament.  An 
impartial  reader  of  Dr.  McKim's  argument  will, 
I  think,  arrive  at  a  conclusion  respecting  the  tra- 
ditional history  of  the  Jewish  nation  similar  to  that 


FOREWORD  xvii 

which  Bishop  Butler  was  modestly  content  to  estab- 
lish respecting  the  Christian  Revelation :  —  "  that 
it  is  not,  however,  so  clear  a  case  that  there  is  noth- 
ing in  it.  There  is,  I  think,  strong  evidence  of  its 
truth;  but  it  is  certain  no  one  can,  upon  principles 
of  reason,  be  satisfied  of  the  contrary." 

Henry  Wage. 

The  Deanery,  Canterbury. 
April,  1906. 


INTRODUCTION 


"I  plead  for  a  criticism  of  a  saner  sort." 

Prof.  Jas.  Robertson,  D.D. 

"There  is  a  criticism  which  is  the  very  wantonness  of  experi- 
mental curiosity."  Bishop  Stubbs. 

"A  sober  observer  cannot  but  conceive  the  greatest  possible 
mistrust  of  the  so-called  assured  results  hitherto  reached  by  the 
criticism  of  the  Pentateuch."  Dr.  Fuitz  Hommel. 

"  Let  it  be  distinctly  stated  that  the  true  point  in  dispute  is  the 
supernatural  origin  of  the  Law.  Under  the  disguise  of  a  purely 
literary  investigation,  an  attack  is  really  made  upon  the  Di\'ine 
origin  of  the  religious  dispensation  which  was  to  be '  a  schoolmaster 
to  lead  us  to  Christ.' "  Dr.  Alfred  Cave. 

"The  Spirit  of  Truth  cannot  take  into  His  service  literary 
fictions  which  trifle  with  the  law  and  the  sense  of  truth." 

Canon  Liddon. 

"The  real  enemies  and  ultimate  levellers  of  this  so-called 
Higher  Criticism  are  they  of  its  own  household.  .  .  .  Expert  is 
ranged  against  expert;  theory  is  displaced  by  theory;  hypothesis 
by  hypothesis."  Bishop  Ellicott. 


INTRODUCTION 

When  one  who  is  neither  an  orientaHst,  nor  a 
Hebraist,  nor  an  archaeologist,  nor  an  expert  in 
literary  analysis,  undertakes  to  discuss  the  results 
of  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the  Pentateuch,  it  is 
natural  that  he  should  be  met  with  the  reminder,  — 
"Shoemaker,  stick  to  your  last!"  I  acknowledge 
myself  entirely  open  to  such  a  criticism  in  taking 
up  my  pen  on  this  subject;  but  I  ask  my  critics  on 
the  threshold  to  remember  that  both  Wellhausen, 
the  oracle,  and  Robertson  Smith,  his  interpreter, 
nearly  a  generation  ago  undertook  to  appeal  their 
cause  from  the  court  of  the  orientalist,  the  linguist, 
and  the  expert  scholar,  to  the  forum  of  opinion  over 
which  common  sense  presides.  The  "  Prolegomena  " 
of  the  former  addresses  itself  to  "  the  mass  of  Bible 
readers."  The  argument  is  declared  to  be  "within 
the  scope  of  any  one  who  reads  the  English  Bible 
carefully,  and  is  able  to  think  clearly." 

A  similar  view  has  been  recently  expressed  by  an 
eminent  scholar  in  relation  to  the  most  burning  of 
New  Testament  problems.     "The  only  thing  to  be 


4  THE  PENTATEUCH 

done,"  he  says,  "  is  for  each  of  us  to  state  his  view 
of  the  case  as  he  sees  it,  and  to  appeal  to  the  pubUc, 
to  the  jury  of  plain  men,  ...  to  decide  between  the 
competing  theories."  ^ 

Now  it  is  customary  for  jurymen,  before  rendering 
their  verdict,  to  discuss  the  question  at  issue,  and 
to  give  each  his  opinion  of  the  arguments  of  the 
advocates  in  the  case.  It  is  this  which  I  have 
undertaken  to  do.  In  the  Lectures  which  follow 
I  am  speaking  as  one  of  the  jury,  not  as  one  of  the 
counsel.  I  give  my  judgment  upon  the  arguments 
of  the  expert,  hoping  that  my  view  of  their  respec- 
tive merits  will  commend  itself  to  my  fellow  jury- 
men, who  must  in  the  last  resort  pronounce  the 
verdict. 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  say  that  I  have  been  in- 
fluenced to  undertake  these  Lectures  by  observing 
the  trend  of  modern  criticism  to  more  and  more 
radical  and  destructive  views.  An  eminent  scholar, 
surveying  the  field  of  criticism  forty  years  ago,  could 
say  that  "most  of  the  boldest  writers,  Eichhorn, 
De  Wette,  Ewald,  Bunsen,  Bleek,  admit  that  it  [the 
Law]  is  of  the  age,  if  not  from  the  lips  or  the  pen  of 
Moses;  that  it  existed  in  its  primitive  form  and 
words,  and,  with  some  of  the  poems  and  other 
historical  passages,  was  among  the  materials  worked 

iRev.  Wm.  Sanday,  D.D.,  "The  Criticism  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel." 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  5 

up  at  a  later  date  by  the  compilers  or  authors  of 
the  present  books  of  Moses."  ^  Within  ten  or 
twelve  years  after  these  words  were  written,  Well- 
hausen  came  forward  with  his  elaborate  theory 
based  upon  the  denial  that  the  books  of  the  Law 
were  of  Mosaic  origin,  refusing  to  concede  even  the 
Decalogue  to  the  authorship  of  the  man  whom  the 
Hebrews  have  ever  reverenced  as  their  lawgiver. 
This  able,  ingenious,  and  profoundly  learned  critic 
differs  from  Ewald  as  much  in  the  spirit  in  which 
he  treats  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  in  the  conclu- 
sions which  he  reaches.  The  devoutness,  the  rever- 
ence, the  religious  depth  of  the  earlier  scholar  is 
painfully  lacking  in  the  later.^  His  views  are  (nat- 
urally, if  not  necessarily)  destructive  not  only  of 
the  antiquity  of  the  books,  but  of  the  reliability  of 
the  early  history  of  the  Jews.  Indeed,  we  have  the 
authority  of  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  living 
scholars  for  saying  that  "  it  is  only  since  Wellhausen 
that  theory  in  regard  to  the  events  of  sacred  history 
has  assumed  a  shape  which  is  diametrically  opposed 
to  Biblical  tradition,  and  especially  to  the  narrative 

1  Milman's  History  of  the  Jews,  4th  Edition,  Vol.  I,  Bk.  Ill, 
p.  177. 

^Compare  Ewald's  indignant  protest  against  "the  so-called 
Criticism"  "which  has  given  up  Moses  and  so  much  that  is 
excellent  besides,"  and  which  "leads  on  directly  to  the  contempt- 
uous rejection  of  the  Old  Testament,  if  not  of  the  New."  — 
Quoted  by  Prof.  Body,  Permanent  Value  of  Genesis,  p.  58. 


6  THE  PENTATEUCH 

parts  of  the  Priestly  Code."  ^  We  have  seen,  in  fact, 
in  our  generation  a  sharp  and  perilous  reaction  from 
the  traditional  view  of  the  Scriptures.  "  On  matters 
of  Biblical  criticism,"  says  a  recent  writer,  "the 
pendulum  has  unduly  swung  from  the  standpoint 
of  a  narrow  traditionalism  towards  that  of  an  exces- 
sive toleration.  The  most  destructive  critics  are 
now  welcomed  as  fellow-workers  in  the  path  of 
progress,  while  there  is  a  disposition  to  regard  all 
conservative  critics  as  more  or  less  obstructives.^" 
The  new  views,  meanwhile,  are  crystalizing  into  a 
tradition  of  scholarship,  and  are  accepted  by  large 
numbers,  especially  of  the  younger  students,  without 
thorough  examination,  in  obedience  to  the  authority 
of  the  guild  of  scholars,  rather  than  in  obedience  to 
reason.  One  hears  from  the  pulpit  and  the  platform, 
admissions  that  many  of  the  Old  Testament  narra- 
tives are  not  historical  but  legendary,  or  fabulous. 
The  appeal  of  Christ  and  his  apostles  to  the  Law 
and  to  the  Prophets,  as  the  test  and  touchstone  of 
truth,  is  disallowed  by  not  a  few  who  to-day 
preach  in  his  name.  Mothers  are  counseled  by 
clergymen  not  to  read  the  Old  Testament  to  their 
children.  It  is  debated  in  Church  papers  whether 
the  histories  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  should 
be  taught   to   the   children   of   the  Church.     And 

1  Homniel,  "The  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition,"  p.  13. 

2  Dr.  W.  H.  Wright's  Introduction,  p.  6. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  7 

Diocesan  Sunday-school  Committees  recommend  for 
study  in  our  Bible  classes,  histories  and  introductions 
written  by  disciples  of  the  Wellhausen  school. 

One  of  the  most  noteworthy  signs  of  the  radical 
trend  of  modern  criticism  is  the  issuance  of  a  great 
Biblical  Encyclopaedia  in  recent  years,  in  which  we 
find  not  only  the  most  extreme  views  of  the  structure 
and  character  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  but  also  elabo- 
rate articles  assailing  some  of  the  fundamental 
articles  of  the  Christian  faith.  The  editor  of  this 
monumental  product  of  the  negative  and  subjective 
criticism  has  recently  published  a  volume  ("  Bible 
Problems")  in  which  he  denies  that  there  is  a  shred 
of  evidence  for  the  Resurrection  of  Christ,  and 
elaborately  argues  that  the  story  of  the  Resurrection 
is  due  to  the  incorporation  into  the  Christian  gospel 
of  the  ancient  resurrection  myths  —  as  of  the  Baby- 
lonian Sun-god,  the  Egyptian  Osiris,  and  the  Phoe- 
nician Adonis.^ 

I  have  in  one  of  my  Lectures  directed  attention 
to  the  spirit  which  unfortunately  tinges  much  of 
the  literature  of  the  modern  critical  school.  To 
characterize  it  as  overbearing  and  intolerant  may 
seem  harsh,  but  I  fear  the  facts  fully  justify  such 
a  description.  One  observes  a  scarcely  veiled  con- 
tempt for  any  scholar  who  undertakes  to  defend  a 

1  Cf.  Article  on  "The  Narratives  of  the  Resurrection,"  Con- 
temporary Review,  Nov.  1905. 


8  THE  PENTATEUCH 

conservative  position  on  the  critical  questions  at 
issue.  It  is  assumed  that  such  writers  are  obscu- 
rantists —  that  they  resist  the  application  of  modern 
scholarship  to  Biblical  investigation  —  that  their 
conclusions  are  predetermined  by  the  inexorable 
demands  of  orthodoxy.  Dr  Sanday  has  recently 
given  us  an  example  of  this  in  connection  with  a 
great  New  Testament  problem.  He  quotes  the 
following  from  Dr.  Cheyne: 

"  Apologetic  considerations  are  brought  in  to  limit 
our  freedom.  The  Fourth  Gospel  must  be  the  work 
of  the  Apostle  John,  and  must  be  in  the  main 
historical,  because  the  inherited  orthodoxy  requires 
it." 

To  this  Dr.  Sanday  replies: 

"Does  he  really  think  that  'the  inherited  ortho- 
doxy '  is  nothing  better  than  a  taskmaster  that  stands 
over  us  with  a  whip  to  keep  us  from  straying  ?  Is 
that  his  view  of  the  divine  meaning  in  the  history 
and  development  of  nineteen  centuries  ?  "  * 

Even  Dr.  Driver  descends  to  this  style  of  argu- 
ment. In  his  "Introduction"  (p.  14)  he  says  of 
certain  conclusions,  "They  are  only  opposed  in  the 
present  instance  by  some  theologians  because  they 
are  supposed  to  conflict  with  the  requirements 
of  the   Christian   faith." 

Another  characteristic  of  the  method  of  argument 
»  "  The  Criticism  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,"  Preface,  p.  10. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  9 

too  often  employed  by  the  negative  critics  is  brought 
out  by  the  same  able  scholar.  Commenting  on  the 
"critical  assumptions"  of  the  school  which  denies 
the  authenticity  and  authority  of  the  Fourth  Gospel, 
he  says: 

"  In  the  eyes  of  the  school  to  which  Dr.  Schmiedel 
belongs,  I  will  not  say  exactly  that  all  the  data  of 
which  they  approve  are  certain,  but  they  are  treated 
very  much  as  if  they  were;  in  building  up  an  argu- 
ment upon  them,  possibilities  easily  and  imper- 
ceptibly glide  into  probabilities,  and  probabilities 
into  certainties."  ^ 

This  pungent  criticism  is  the  more  noteworthy 
because  it  proceeds  from  a  writer  of  such  character- 
istically eirenic  spirit  as  Dr.  Sanday.  His  words 
are,  I  think,  just  as  true,  mutatis  mutandis,  of  much 
of  the  reasoning  of  Old  Testament  critics  of  the 
Wellhausen  school. 

To  yet  one  more  feature  of  the  method  pursued 
by  many  of  the  leading  critics,  attention  should  be 
called :  I  mean  the  practice  of  discrediting  the  sources 
whence  the  materials  of  the  history  are  drawn,  when 
they  conflict  with  the  theory  which  the  critic  seeks 
to  establish.  The  records  are  appealed  to  as  wit- 
nesses to  establish  the  theory,  but  their  veracity  is 
impugned  when  the  testimony  is  damaging  to  the 
theory!  The  inconvenient  passages  are  set  down 
1  "The  Criticism  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,"  Preface,  p.  38. 


10  THE  PENTATEUCH 

as  "late  insertions,"  or  "palpable  glosses,"  etc. 
This  method  is  described  by  one  of  our  ablest  and 
most  candid  and  fair-minded  scholars  in  the  following 
caustic  passage  * : 

"On  what  authority  are  these  'insertions'  to  be 
removed?  By  what  guide  are  we  to  adjust  the 
prophetic  misapprehensions?  The  only  fixed  thing 
perceivable  is  the  theory  itself;  the  only  standard  is 
'strike  out'  or  'I  consider.'  For  the  rest,  what 
may  be  called  by  admirers  a  delicate  process  of 
criticism  may  appear  to  others  uncommonly  like  a 
piece  of  literary  thimble-rigging. 

"You  come  upon  the  critic  suddenly  when  he 
professes  to  be  engaged  in  one  of  these  delicate 
processes  of  criticism,  and  you  find  him  slipping  his 
subjective  scale  up  his  sleeve.  The  passages  which 
disturb  a  pet  theory  are  declared  to  disturb  the 
connection. 

"We  have,  in  fact,  no  contemporary  documents 
until  the  critic  has  adjusted  them,  and  the  theory 
ultimately  is  appealed  to  in  confirmation  of  it- 
self." 

Here  is  an  instance  of  this  method:  The  books  of 
Samuel  contain  a  plain  reference  to  Levitcs  and 
Levitical  cities.  But  this  is  in  conflict  with  Wcll- 
hausen's  theory  of  the  post-exilic  origin  of  these. 
Accordingly  he  declares,  oracularly,  "There  is  not 
>  Prof.  Robertson  in  his  "Early  Religion  of  Israel." 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  11 

a  word  of  truth  in  the  whole  story  —  it  is  a  gloss 
by  a  later  editor!  " 

Compare  the  following  from  the  new  edition  of 
"  The  Cyclopedic  Handbook  of  the  Bible,"  by  Dr. 
Angus  and  Dr.  Green: 

"  When  the  facts  are  against  the  theory,  the  facts 
have  to  be  altered  that  the  theory  may  stand!  Not 
once  or  twice  merely  Elohim  is  found  where  the 
hypothesis  denjands  Jehovah,  and  the  converse:  the 
critic's  inference  being  that  the  text  is  corrupt  or 
that  the  redactor  has  thrown  it  into  confusion,  etc." 
(p.  399). 

"  Nothing,"  writes  Prof.  C.  Von  Ovelli,  "  is  more 
astonishing  to  me  than  the  readiness  with  which  even 
diligent  explorers  in  the  field  attach  themselves  to  the 
dominant  theory,  and  repeat  the  most  rash  hypotheses 
as  if  they  were  part  of  an  unquestioned  creed."  ^ 

I  would  like  here  to  emphasize  what  I  have  stated 
in  the  text  of  the  Lectures  which  follow,  that  the 
vital  issue  in  this  discussion  is  not  the  authorship, 
or  the  date,  or  even  the  structure  of  the  sacred 
books,  but  their  trustworthiness  as  historic  records 
—  as  the  records  of  God's  older  revelation.  It  is 
because  the  critical  theories  now  in  the  ascendant 
are  fatal  to  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Scriptures 
that  I  feel  moved  to  show  the  inconclusiveness  of 
1  Introduction  to  Holler's  book,  "Are  the  Critics  Right?" 


12  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  arguments  by  which  they  are  sustained/  Dr. 
Driver,  indeed,  insists  that  the  Higher  Criticism  is 
concerned  only  with  questions  of  the  date,  and 
authorship,  and  structure  of  the  documents,  and 
has  nothing  to  do  with  historical  conclusions.  He 
says  that  Wellhausen's  view  of  the  date  of  the 
Priestly  Code  has  no  necessary  connection  with  his 
view  of  the  early  stages  of  Israel's  religious  history. 
But  certainly  there  is  a  natural,  in  some  cases  even 
a  necessary,  connection  between  literary  criticism 
and  historical  criticism.  The  trustworthiness  of  the 
record  cannot  but  depend  upon  its  antiquity.  Note 
also  that  Wellhausen's  chief  argument  for  his  theory 
is  the  threefold  correspondence  between  Law  and 
History.  How  then  can  it  be  maintained  that  the 
Higher  Criticism  has  nothing  to  do  with  historical 
conclusions  ?  That  the  theory  of  Wellhausen 
has  disintegrated  the  confidence  of  those  who  have 
embraced  it  in  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Hebrew 
records  is  undeniable.  Thus,  Dr.  Lotz,  Professor 
of  Theology  in  the  University  of  Erlangen,  in  his 
recent  work,  "  Das  Alte  Testament  und  die  Wissen- 
schaft,"   1905,  p.   22,  says:  "The  newer  criticism 

*  Compare  the  judgment  of  Prof.  Jas.  Robertson :  "  The 
hypothesis  of  Graf  carries  with  it  the  assmnption  that  the  narra- 
tives accompanying  the  laws  of  the  Pentateuch  are  not  history 
in  the  proper  sense  of  tlie  word  at  all,  but  the  product  of  late 
imaginative  writers,  and,  in  short,  fictitious."  —  Early  Religion 
of  Israel,  p.  466. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  13 

pronounces  the  whole  representation  of  Old  Testa- 
ment history  as  we  read  it  in  the  Bible,  and  as 
Jesus  read  it  and  acknowledged  it  to  be,  false."  He 
further  says  that  one  of  the  chief  points  of  the  new 
view  is  that  "  Israel,  previous  to  the  discovery  of 
Deuteronomy,  possessed  no  written  torah  .  .  .  except 
certain  collections  of  judicial  decisions."  "  The  law 
of  ceremonial  worship  was  first  produced  in  the 
time  of  the  Exile,  and  after."  ^ 

Even  the  moderate  wing  of  the  Wellhausen  school, 
of  which  Dr.  Driver  and  Dr.  Kirkpatrick  are  illus- 
trious representatives,  is  justly  liable  to  the  charge 
of  denying  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Hebrew 
records.  Asserting,  as  these  writers  do,  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  literary  problem  and  the  historical 
problem,  yet  their  recent  essays  on  the  *'  Higher 
Criticism"  concern  themselves  prominently  with 
historical  conclusions,  thereby  illustrating  the  fact 
that  the  two  classes  of  problems  are  inextricably 
interwoven,  indeed  often  mutually  dependent. 
Prof.  Kirkpatrick  tells  us  in  his  recent  "  Church 
Congress"  paper  that  "historical  criticism  affirms 
that  much  of  the  history  has  been  colored  by  the 
beliefs  and  practices  of  the  times  in  which  the  books 
were  compiled,  long  after  the  events,  and  must  be 
regarded  as  rather  an  ideal  than  an  actual  picture 
of  the  national  life.     It  bids  us,  to  a  great  extent, 

*  I  owe  these  quotations  from  Lotz  to  the  Dean  of  Canterbiuy. 


14  THE  PENTATEUCH 

revolutionize  our  views  of  the  course  of  the  history  of 
Israel."^  Dr.  Driver  says,  "We  are  not  reading 
literal  history,  but  liistory  that  has  been  idealized  .  .  . 
or  transformed."  Now  I  have  no  wish  to  impute 
to  these  eminent  scholars  responsibility  for  all  the 
destructive  conclusions  of  Wellhausen.  I  recognize 
gladly  their  devout  and  reverent  spirit,  and  their 
earnest  effort  to  retain  their  hold  upon  the  divine 
revelation  of  the  Old  Testament.  But  their  position 
appears  to  me  illogical.  Having  conceded  so  much 
to  the  views  of  their  master,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why 
they  do  not  concede  more,  and  I  think  it  very  un- 
likely that  the  majority  of  those  who  accept  their 
guidance  will  stop  where  they  have  stopped,  on  the 
slippery  path  that  leads  to  the  rejection  of  the  author- 
ity and  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures. 
Wellhausen  himself  admits  that  "Moses  was  the 
founder  of  the  torah,  —  that  there  is  a  certain  Mosaic 
root  to  the  Mosaic  law  as  we  now  have  it."  Yet 
how  thoroughly  did  he  discredit  the  trustworthiness 
of  the  record!  Dr.  Driver,  Dr.  Kirkpatrick,  and 
Prof.  Ottley  hold  what  has  been  called  the  skeleton 
view.  In  their  opinion  the  patriarchal  histories 
were  not  written  for  hundreds  of  years  after  the 
events.  Nothing  but  a  skeleton  of  tradition  could 
have  come  down  to  the  writers,  and  consequently 
they  must  be  supposed  to  have  clothed  them  with 
^  The  italics  are  mine. 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  15 

a  moral  and  religious  vesture  of  their  own  times. 
In  other  words,  oral  traditions  furnished  the  skeleton, 
and  out  of  these  the  pattern  figures  of  the  patriarchs 
were  created.  The  statement  of  the  Dean  of  Can- 
terbury seems  amply  justified,  "that  the  general 
view  of  the  history  that  is  associated  with  the  school 
of  Wellhausen  is  treated  by  these  writers  as  having 
been  established."  Thus  we  must  suppose  "the 
Jews  of  the  time  of  Ezra  accepted  a  view  of  their 
national  history  which  was  a  revolutionary  misrep- 
resentation of  the  facts."  Dr.  Driver  has  recently 
declared  that  he  does  not  hold  to  the  revolutionizing 
of  the  main  outlines  of  Israelitish  history.  And 
yet,  in  his  article  on  "  Jacob,"  in  Hastings's  Diction- 
ary of  the  Bible,  he  says  that  "the  primary  canon 
of  sound  historical  criticism"  is  "that  only  narra- 
tives contemporary,  or  nearly  so,  with  the  events 
narrated,  .  .  .  can  claim  such  a  character"  (of 
literal  exactness).  "The  basis  of  the  narratives  in 
Genesis  is,  in  fact,  popular  oral  tradition;  and  that 
being  so,  we  may  expect  them  to  display  the  char- 
acteristics which  popular  oral  tradition  does  in  other 
cases."  "  Wellhausen  may  be  wrong  in  not  allowing 
a  more  historical  sub-stratum  of  the  patriarchal 
narratives,  but  his  general  characterization  of  them 
is  just."  And  what  is  his  characterization  ?  Why, 
he  holds  the  entire  Pentateuch  not  historical  but 
legendary ! 


16  THE  PENTATEUCH 

It  is  clear,  then,  I  think,  that  while  moderate 
critics  like  Driver  and  Ottley  and  Kirkpatrick  can- 
not fairly  be  charged  with  the  more  extreme  con- 
clusions of  Wellhausen,  they  do,  nevertheless,  belong 
to  the  Wellhausen  school,  and  their  influence  must 
be  held  to  tell,  on  the  whole,  for  the  disintegration 
of  our  confidence  in  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Old 
Testament  Scriptures.  One  sees  a  fundamental 
antithesis  between  the  positions  of  these  critics  and 
those  of  such  scholars  as  Prof.  Sayce,  Prof.  Hommel, 
Prof.  Robertson,  Prof.  Orr,  Dr.  Lotz,  and  Dr. 
Wace,  the  Dean  of  Canterbury.  Yet  these  scholars 
are  prepared  to  concede  much  on  questions  of  purely 
literary  criticism.  Thus  Prof.  Sayce  admits  that 
the  critics  may  be  right  in  affirming  the  late  com- 
pilation of  Deuteronomy  and  of  the  Priestly  Code. 
Prof.  Robertson  concedes  the  possibility  of  the  late 
compilation  of  Deuteronomy,  and  Dr.  Wace  re- 
marks that  "we  must  allow  great  scope  to  literary 
criticism  in  books  which  have  come  to  us  from  such 
remote  antiquity,  and  from  the  manuscripts  of  such 
late  date."  Yet  these  scholars  stand  in  acute  antag- 
onism, not  only  to  the  extreme  views  of  the  Well- 
hausen school,  but  to  the  moderate  wing  as  well. 

^Vhat,  then,  is  the  real  fundamental  issue  at  stake 
between  these  opposing  groups  of  scholars  ?  It  is 
not  that  the  one  group  accepts  the  principles  of  the 
Higher  Criticism,  and  the  other  does  not.     In  other 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  17 

words,  it  is  not  literary  criticism,  as  such,  that  divides 
them,  but  it  is  the  conclusions  of  literary  criticism 
which  are  associated  with  the  name  of  Wellhausen, 
and  which  are  fatal  to  the  historical  trustworthiness 
of  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch.  Their  criticism 
demands,  as  Prof.  Kirkpatrick  confesses,  that  "we 
should,  to  a  great  extent,  revolutionize  our  views 
of  the  course  of  the  history  of  Israel."  The  other 
group  of  scholars,  while  conceding  the  possibility 
of  the  late  compilation  of  these  books,  maintain 
that  they  rest,  not  upon  ancient  oral  tradition,  but 
upon  ancient  documents  contemporaneous  with  the 
events  described. 

If  any  confirmation  of  the  correctness  of  the  above 
statement  were  needed,  it  is  found  in  the  controversy 
waged  in  the  columns  of  the  Record  for  several 
months  last  autumn,  between  Dr.  Driver  and  his 
friends  on  the  one  hand,  and  Dr.  Wace  on  the  other. 
That  correspondence  furnishes  incidentally  a  strong 
confirmation  of  the  position  which  I  have  taken  in 
these  Lectures,  namely,  that  there  is  no  consensus 
of  opinion  among  the  critics  themselves  upon  the 
matters  at  issue.  Dr.  Driver,  who  has  gone  so  far 
as  to  declare  that  it  is  a  suppressio  veri  to 
deny  that  the  critics  are  agreed,  asserting  that  on 
all  essential  points  they  are  at  one  —  himself  fur- 
nishes incidentally  a  refutation  of  his  own  position. 
He  expresses  great  admiration  of  the  scholarship  of 


18  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Dillmann,  yet  he  acknowledges  that  Dillmann  differs 
from  Wellhausen  respecting  the  date  and  structure 
of  the  Priestly  Code.  Now  precisely  that  is  the 
distinctive  feature  of  Wellhausen's  theory.  His 
views  upon  that  point  revolutionize  the  whole  atti- 
tude of  the  critics  who  accept  his  leadership.  How, 
then,  can  Dr.  Driver  claim  a  consensus  of  the  critics 
on  all  essential  points,  when  so  great  a  critic  as 
Dillmann,  and  many  who  follow  his  leadership, 
absolutely  reject  Wellhausen's  view  upon  that  point  ? 
As  the  Dean  of  Canterbury  writes,  the  significance 
of  Dillmann's  position  lies  in  the  fact  that,  though 
he  accepted  the  chief  results  of  the  literary  criticism 
of  the  Pentateuch,  he  formally,  and  even  indignantly, 
denied  the  conclusions  which  are  based  on  it  by  the 
historical  criticism  of  the  school  of  Wellhausen. 
The  fact  is  notorious  enough  for  the  writers  of  the 
article  on  the  Tabernacle,  in  Hastings's  Dictionary 
(Vol.  IV,  p.  64),  to  speak  of  "so  strenuous  an 
opponent  of  the  Graf-Wellhausen  hypothesis  as 
August  Dillmann."  The  Dean  quotes  Dillmann's 
own  statement  that  "The  Vatke-Kuenen  Wellhau- 
sen view  is,  according  to  my  conviction,  wholly 
inconsistent  with  the  statements  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment." Again,  in  reference  to  the  same  view,  Dill- 
mann says,  "As  to  the  internal  contradictions  and 
impossibilities  of  this  theory,  compare  the  work  of 
James  Robertson,  of  Glasgow,  'The  Early  Religion 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  19 

of  Israel  as  Set  Forth  by  Biblical  Writers  and  by 
Modern  Historians,'  a  book  which  is,  no  doubt, 
written  on  somewhat  broad  lines,  but  which  hits 
the  nail  on  the  head." 

Notwithstanding  these  clear  utterances  of  Dill- 
mann  himself,  Dr.  Driver  will  have  it  that  the 
difference  between  Dillmann  and  Wellhausen  is  not 
vital.  He  is  so  firmly  resolved  that  the  critics  shall 
be  agreed  "on  all  essential  points,"  that  he  ignores 
the  most  pronounced  differences  between  them.  It 
must,  indeed,  be  considered  a  remarkable  fact  that 
so  great  a  scholar  as  Dr.  Driver  should  contend 
almost  with  vehemence  that  it  is  a  suppression  of 
the  truth  to  deny  the  consensus  of  the  critics  on  all 
essential  points,  when  such  critics  as  Dillmann,  and 
Klostermann,  and  Hommel,  and  Dr.  James  Robert- 
son, and  Dr.  Lotz,  and  Dr.  Hermann  Strack 
(Professor  of  Theology  at  Berlin)  and  Prof.  Van 
Oettingen  (to  mention  no  more),  stand  in  distinct 
opposition  to  Wellhausen  and  his  school,  both  as  to 
the  literary  and  the  historical  criticism  of  the  Penta- 
teuch. And  I  think  the  fact  must  seriously  impair 
our  confidence  in  the  judgment,  if  not  the  accuracy, 
of  the  scholar  who  maintains  such  a  paradox.  The 
distinguished  professor  has  given  us  recently 
another  example  of  this  infirmity  of  a  noble  mind. 
In  the  columns  of  The  Guardian  he  calls  attention 
to  Prof.  James  Robertson's  expressed  "approval" 


20  THE  PENTATEUCH 

"of  the  line"  taken  by  him  (Dr.  Driver)  in  his 
"Introduction."  He  insists,  too,  that  Dr.  Robert- 
son's commendation  of  his  book  is  "  without  reserve." 
Now  it  is  very  true  that  Prof.  Robertson  commends 
Dr.  Driver's  "fairness  in  the  treatment  of  details," 
and  his  "cautious  reserve  in  face  of  doubtful  or 
conflicting  evidence."  He  notes  also,  "with  no 
little  satisfaction,"  indications  that  "he  holds  much 
more  moderate  views  than  those  of  the  prevailing 
school  of  critics"  (p.  xi).  But,  having  said  this. 
Dr.  Robertson  clearly  intimates  his  decided  dissatis- 
faction with  Dr.  Driver's  position  on  some  very 
vital  points.  He  regrets  that  that  scholar  does  not 
"accentuate  the  difference,"  which  he  hopes  really 
exists,  between  himself  and  Wellhausen,  as  Konig 
has  done.  Perhaps  there  was  a  good  reason  why 
Dr.  Driver  did  not  accentuate  that  difference,  namely, 
because  the  difference  was  not  fundamental.  We 
have  seen  that  he  holds  Wellhausen's  general 
position  to  be  correct. 

Prof.  Robertson  differs  from  Driver  in  maintaining 
the  topographical  accuracy  of  the  Old  Testament 
(p.  xii),  surely  a  very  important  particular  bearing 
on  its  trustworthiness.  But  his  chief  difference  with 
him  —  and  it  is  an  acute  difference  —  touches  "  the 
relation  of  modern  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament 
to  the  authority  of  the  New  Testament,  and  to  the 
subject  of  inspiration."     He  demands  of  Dr.  Driver 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  21 

whether  Christianity  would  have  equal  value  to  us 
if  Abraham  be  "  a  free  creation  of  unconscious  art," 
and  a  great  part  of  the  Pentateuchal  narrative  "  the 
fruit  solely  of  late  Jewish  fancy."  And  he  finds 
Dr.  Driver's  reply  "altogether  inadequate."  The 
assurance  that  "criticism  in  the  hands  of  Christian 
scholars  does  not  banish  or  destroy  the  inspiration 
of  the  Old  Testament  —  it  presupposes  it,"  does 
not  satisfy  this  profoundly  reverent  and  earnest 
scholar.  He  wants  to  know  what  Dr.  Driver  means 
by  inspiration.  He  is  distrustful  of  his  attitude  on 
this  point,  and  desires  to  be  informed  wherein  his 
position  differs  from  that  of  critics  who  profess  no 
such  reverence  for  the  Old  Testament. 

That  the  attitude  of  these  two  scholars  on  the 
question  of  the  general  trustworthiness  of  the  Old 
Testament  history  is  sharply  contrasted  cannot  be 
doubted  for  a  moment  by  careful  readers  of  their 
works.  As  to  Wellhausen,  the  one  is  in  full  agree- 
ment with  his  general  position,  though  differing  on 
some  points,  while  the  other  writes  an  elaborate 
work  in  refutation  of  his  views. 

Exception  has  been  taken  to  the  representation 
given  in  the  following  Lectures  of  the  position  of 
Wellhausen  in  several  particulars.  Let  a  word  be 
said  here,  then,  on  that  subject.  In  his  "  History  of 
Israel"  (pp.  3,  4)  the  great  German  critic  tells  us 


22  THE  PENTATEUCH 

how  he  eagerly  embraced  the  hypothesis  of  Graf, 
"who  placed  the  Law  later  than  the  Prophets." 
This,  indeed,  is  the  fundamental  feature  of  his 
system,  and  is  generally  recognized  as  such.  That 
Wellhausen  held  to  the  unhistorical  character  of 
the  Pentateuch  is  also,  I  think,  generally  conceded 
by  students  of  his  works.  In  his  "  Prologomena " 
(p.  320),  he  says,  "  In  the  patriarchal  legend,  the 
ethnographic  element  is  always  predominant,"  and 
again  (p.  327),  the  legend  itself,  for  the  most  part, 
is  "the  product  of  a  countless  number  of  narra- 
tives unconsciously  modifying  each  other's  work." 
He  finds  a  difficulty  in  classifying  Abraham,  since 
he  does  not  bear  the  name  of  a  tribe,  but  he  is 
quite  sure  he  is  not  an  historical  character  —  no, 
but  "a  pure  creation  of  unconscious  art"  (p.  320). 
His  view  of  the  origin  of  Deuteronomy,  that  it 
was  produced  in  the  reign  of  Josiah,  and  that  it  was 
designed  by  its  author,  or  authors,  to  be  the  basis, 
and  to  furnish  the  programme,  of  that  monarch's 
reformation,  does  unquestionably  destroy  its  his- 
torical character.  Dr.  Driver,  indeed,  objects  to 
calling  the  book  "a  pious  fraud,"  but  if  the  situa- 
tions it  describes  never  existed,  if  the  speeches  it 
contains  were  never  delivered  (even  in  substance), 
and  if  the  legislation  it  ascribes  to  Moses  was  not 
actually  promulgated  by  him  (again  even  in  sub- 
stance) —  and  this  I  understand  to  be  Wellhausen's 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  23 

view  —  then  what  was  it  but  an  invention  for  pious 
purposes,  a  fiction  designed  to  produce  a  desired 
religious  result  ?  Dr.  Hommel,  once  his  enthusiastic 
disciple,  so  understands  the  matter.  He  denomi- 
nates it  as,  on  his  view,  "a  forgery  on  a  grand 
scale." 

As  to  the  Priestly  Code,  I  have  said  that  Well- 
hausen  regards  it  as  "a  work  of  the  imagination  of 
the  priestly  school  in  the  time  of  Ezra,"  and  I  am 
sustained  by  so  able  and  candid  a  specialist  as 
Dr.  James  Robertson,  who  characterizes  the  sup- 
posed work  of  the  Ezra  school  as  "a  wholesale 
manufacturing  of  incidents  and  situations."  Again 
he  says,  "It  amounts  to  an  ascription  of  fiction,  if 
not  fraud,  to  the  writers"  ("Early  Religion  of 
Israel,"  pp.  419,  420).  This  statement  is  particu- 
larly noteworthy  in  view  of  the  fact  that  its  author 
accepts  the  composite  character  of  the  Pentateuch, 
and  holds  that  "  The  Biblical  theory  of  the  history 
is  not  inconsistent  with  the  supposition  of  a  late 
date  for  the  book  of  Deuteronomy."  However, 
Wellhausen's  denial  that  there  ever  was  a  Taber- 
nacle in  the  Wilderness,  or  a  Day  of  Atonement 
appointed  there,  or  for  ages  after,  coupled  with  his 
declaration  that  the  writers  of  these  books  "com- 
pletely altered  the  ancient  history,"  is  sufficient 
proof  of  what  his  real  view  was. 

But   we    are    told    that   Wellhausen    holds    that 


24  THE  PENTATEUCH 

"  Moses  was  the  founder  of  the  Torah  "  (the  Law). 
But  we  ask,  in  what  sense  and  to  what  extent? 
Let  us  Hsten  to  his  own  account  of  the  matter: 
"Moses  may  have  been  the  founder  of  the  Torah, 
though  the  Pentateuchal  legislation  was  codified 
almost  a  thousand  years  later;  for  the  Torah  was 
originally  not  a  written  Law  but  the  oral  decisions 
of  the  priests  at  the  sanctuary  —  case-law  in  short. 
.  .  .  But  while  it  was  only  at  a  late  date  that  the 
ritual  appeared  as  Torah,  as  it  does  in  the  Priestly 
Code,  its  usages  and  traditions  are  exceedingly 
ancient,  going  back,  in  fact,  to  pre-Mosaic  and 
heathenish  times.  It  is  absurd  to  speak  as  if  Graf's 
hypothesis  meant  that  the  whole  ritual  is  the  inven- 
tion of  the  Priestly  Code,  first  put  into  practice 
after  the  exile;  all  that  is  aflSirmed  by  the  advocates 
of  that  hypothesis  is  that  in  earlier  times  the  ritual 
was  not  the  substructure  of  an  hierocracy,  that  there 
was,  in  fact,  no  hierocracy  before  the  Exile,  but  that 
Jehovah's  sovereignty  was  an  ideal  thing,  and  not 
visibly  embodied  in  an  organization  of  the  com- 
monwealth under  the  forms  of  a  specifically  spiritual 
power."  * 

In  this  passage  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  laws 

codified  a   thousand   years    after   Moses  were,   in 

Wellhausen's   opinion,  not  written   but   oral;    also, 

that  the  usages  and  traditions  of  the  Priestly  Code 

1  Art.  "  Pentateuch,"  Encyc.  Britt.,  p.  513. 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  25 

go  back  even  of  Moses,  and  have  a  heathenish 
origin;  and  that  there  was  no  Jewish  hierocracy  or 
priesthood  before  the  Exile.  Then  we  must  recall 
another  statement  of  Wellhausen,  that  "No  trace 
can  be  found  (before  the  Exile)  of  acquaintance  with 
the  so-called  Mosaic  Law"  (the  Priestly  Code). 
Add  to  this  his  declaration  that  the  Pentateuch  is 
not  historical  but  legendary;  that  Moses  is  not  the 
author  of  the  Decalogue;  and  that  the  writers  of 
P  "  completely  altered  the  ancient  history,"  "  idealiz- 
ing the  past  to  their  hearts'  content "  —  and  it 
must  become  clear  that  what  Moses  contributed 
to  the  Law  as  we  now  have  it  was,  in  his  view,  a 
very  slender  and  attenuated  root  indeed!  Accord- 
ing to  him,  the  priestly  school  of  Ezekiel  "wrote 
a  thin,  fictitious  history  complementary  to  the 
legend  which  JE  had  already  written  hundreds  of 
years  after  the  events."  They  further  embellished 
their  record  with  "the  fruit  of  late  Jewish  fancy" 
—  the  fiction  of  the  Tabernacle,  the  fiction  of 
Aaron's  consecration  to  the  priesthood,  the  fiction 
of  the  Day  of  Atonement.  ^ 

One  of  my  critics  ^  has  made  an  elaborate  attempt 
to  show  that  Hommel,  Margoliouth,  and  Sayce 
are  very  doubtful  allies  for  one  who  holds  my  views. 

1  "  Prologomena,"  p.  348,  quoted  by  E.  E.  Spencer. 

2  See  the  Churchman,  Dec.  9,  1905. 


26  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Quite  true,  if  his  representation  of  their  position 
were  correct. 

But  let  us  see.  We  are  assured  by  this  writer 
that  Dr.  Fritz  Hommel's  position  is  "Httle  removed 
from  Wellhausen's,"  because  he  places  the  compila- 
tion or  redaction  of  the  original  documents  of  parts 
of  the  Pentateuch  in  the  time  of  the  Kings,  while 
Wellhausen  places  it  in  the  time  of  Ezra.  But  the 
point  is  that  the  latter  holds  the  Priestly  Code,  and 
Deuteronomy  too,  to  be  chiefly  a  work  of  the 
imagination,  while  Hommel  holds  the  documents 
"  are  based  on  a  trustworthy  Mosaic  tradition." 
Wellhausen  says  of  the  men  who  "produced"  that 
Code,  that  they  made  "  an  artificial  and  ideal  repris- 
tination."  Dr.  Hommel  says  the  Priestly  Code  is 
"notoriously  regarded  by  the  Wellhausen  school  as 
a  post-exilic  forgery."  And  Wellhausen  himself 
says,  in  his  article,  "Pentateuch"  (Encyc.  Brit.,  p. 
512),  "The  substance  of  the  Pentateuch  is  not 
historical,  but  legendary."  It  is  true  Hommel  does 
not  affirm  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Penta- 
teuch; neither  do  I:  I  hold  it  an  open  question.  It 
is  true,  also,  that  he  admits  several  sources  in  the 
Pentateuch  —  a  position  which  I  do  not  contest. 
But  Hommel  differs  toto  coelo  from  Wellhausen  on 
the  really  vital  parts  of  his  theory,  as  any  one  who 
will  read  his  "  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition  "  will  see 
in  places  too  numerous  to  cite.     He  speaks  of  the 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  27 

"ingenious  but  misleading  arguments"  of  Well- 
hausen  in  allotting  "  the  different  sources  to  various 
dates  ...  all  distant  from  the  time  of  Moses" 
(p.  13).  The  purpose  of  his  book  is  to  show  that 
"  the  traditions  concerning  the  early  history  of  Israel 
.  .  .  contain  a  whole  host  of  records,  the  antiquity 
and  genuineness  of  which  are  vouched  for  by  external 
evidence"  (p.  25).  Again,  "Wellhausen  bases  one 
of  the  main  pillars  of  his  system  "  on  *'  the  assump- 
tion "  that  Deuteronomy  first  came  into  existence  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  seventh  century  b.c";  but  this, 
he  says,  "we  have  no  right  to  assume"  (p.  lO). 
On  the  contrary,  "  Deuteronomy  must  have  been  in 
existence  at  least  long  before  Hosea"  (p.  11).  Again, 
"  To  assume  that  the  inconsistencies  —  which  are 
often  enough  merely  superficial  —  between  the 
Priestly  Code  and  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  time 
of  the  Judges  afford  sufficient  reason  for  proclaiming 
the  whole  Priestly  Code  a  post-exilic  fabrication," 
involves  "a  monstrous  falsification  of  tradition" 
(p.  17).  Yet  again,  "  Only  since  Wellhausen  a 
theory  in  regard  to  the  events  of  sacred  history  has 
assumed  a  shape  which  is  diametrically  opposed  to 
Biblical  tradition"  (p.  13).  Yet  again,  "It  is  un- 
questionable that  the  higher  critics  have  gone 
virtually  bankrupt  in  their  attempt  to  unravel  .  .  . 
the  web  in  which  the  different  sources  are  entangled  " 
(p.  18).     Finally,  "The  Graf- Wellhausen  theory  is 


28  THE  PENTATEUCH 

contradicted  in  various  particulars  by  evidence  of 
the  most  direct  kind,  which  defies  contradiction" 
(p.  27). 

Yet  we  are  assured  that  Hommel  is  "in  virtual 
agreement"  with  Wellhausen!  Strange  that  Hom- 
mel himself  didn't  find  it  out!  Strange  he  should 
have  written  an  elaborate  work  to  show  that  Well- 
hausen's  theory  was  untenable!  Let  me  thank  my 
critic  for  bringing  out  the  fact  that  Hommel,  who 
in  1892  was  an  enthusiastic  adherent  of  Wellhausen, 
saw  at  length  the  error  of  his  views  and  repudiated 
his  former  position  in  1897. 

Again,  this  critic  has  discovered  that  Prof. 
Margoliouth  is  not  an  antagonist,  but  an  ally,  of 
Wellhausen.  He  quotes  from  an  article  in  Has- 
tings's Dictionary  a  passage  which  proves  to  his 
satisfaction  that  the  Laudian  Professor  considers 
that  Deuteronomy  was  composed  in  the  reign 
of  Josiah,  and  then  he  gloats  over  the  discoveiy 
of  another  passage  in  the  same  article  in  which 
Margoliouth  is  supposed  to  assert  that  no  part 
of  the  Bible  is  of  greater  antiquity  than  1100  b.c.  ! 
And  so  he  finds  that  I  have  cited  in  support  of 
my  position  an  author  who  "sends  the  Decalogue 
flying  into  the  air,"  and  "  pulverizes  the  patriarchal 
stories,"  and,  in  short,  proves  to  be  a  more  dar- 
ing and  destructive  critic  than  Hermann  Gunkel 
himself! 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  29 

Had  my  ingenious  critic  no  misgiving  when  he 
wrote  these  words  ?  Did  it  not  occur  to  him 
that  such  a  discovery  was  really  too  good  to  be 
true? 

Had  he  not  heard  echoes  of  the  battle  between 
this  same  Professor  Margoliouth  and  Professors 
Cheyne  and  Driver  and  Dr.  Neubauer,  of  the 
Bodleian  Library,  because  of  his  contention  that 
"between  the  date  200  B.C.  and  the  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  there  must  lie  the  deep  waters  of 
the  Captivity,  the  grave  of  the  old  Hebrew  and  the 
old  Israel,  and  the  womb  of  the  new  Hebrew  and 
the  new  Israel." 

That  my  critic  has  completely  misunderstood 
Margoliouth's  meaning  can  easily  be  made  clear 
from  one  or  two  passages  in  his  volume  entitled, 
"Lines  of  Defense  of  the  Biblical  Revelation." 
First,  as  to  the  date  of  Deuteronomy:  Margoliouth 
has  an  elaborate  essay  to  prove  that  the  Book  of 
Wisdom  is  from  the  hand  of  Solomon.^  He  then 
declares  (p.  71)  that  "Wisdom,  without  question, 
contains  references  not  only  to  Genesis  but  to 
Exodus,  Numbers,  Deuteronomy."  It  follows  that 
in  his  opinion  Deuteronomy  must  have  existed 
before  the  date  of  Solomon,  which  was,  say,  1000 
B.C.     How,  then,  could  he  maintain  in  Hastings's 

*  I  give  no  opinion  upon  this  hypothesis  of  his.  Its  soundness 
or  unsoundness  does  not  affect  my  argument. 


30  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Dictionary  that  it  had  its  origin  in  621  B.C.  ?  Sec- 
ondly, as  to  the  antiquity  of  the  Pentateuch,  Mar- 
goliouth  writes  {Id.  p.  70):  "The  importance  of 
this  result  is  that  it  seriously  damages  the  modem 
criticism  of  the  Pentateuch.  For  that  the  Penta- 
teuch known  to  the  author  of  Wisdom  {i.e.,  Solomon) 
was  practically  the  same  as  our  Pentateuch  does 
not  admit  of  question."  Is  this  a  view  in  harmony 
with  Wellhausen  ?  Add  to  this  his  positive  state- 
ment of  his  acute  difference  with  the  modern  school 
as  to  "the  date  and  analysis  of  the  Hebrew  docu- 
ments." {Id.  p.  309.)  Notice  also  his  sarcastic 
reference  to  "the  modern  Hebraists  who  reject 
Deuteronomy"  (p.  287),  and  his  boast,  "We  can 
walk  through  the  camp  of  the  Biblical  critics  without 
striking  a  blow"  (p.  293).  Again  he  refers  to  the 
"hopeless  failure  of  the  Hebraists  of  our  time"  to 
solve  a  particular  problem,  and  amimadverts  on 
their  self-contradictions  (pp.  294,  295).  In  another 
passage  (p.  70)  he  "  doubts  whether  our  critical 
instruments  are  sufficiently  powerful  to  analyze 
documents  of  siich  remote  antiquity";  and  again  he 
says  (p.  285),  "  Therefore  the  criticism  of  the  Penta- 
teuch collapses.'"  Would  Margoliouth  use  such 
language  about  the  Hebrew  documents  if  they 
ascended  no  higher  up  the  stream  of  time  than 
1100  B.C.?  Credat  JudoBUS  Apella;  noji  ego!  And 
was  he  really  in  "  virtual  agreement,"  as  this  writer 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  31 

tells  us,  with  the  dominant  school  of  critics,  when  he  so 
vehemently  declared  his  acute  antagonism  to  them  ? 
It  is  not  surprising,  I  admit,  that  one  who  is  not 
familiar  with  Margoliouth's  book,  from  which  I 
have  quoted,  should  have  misunderstood  the  meaning 
of  his  article  in  Hastings's  Dictionary;  but  it  is 
simply  impossible  to  interpret  him  as  this  critic  has 
done,  with  that  book  of  his  before  us,  especially 
when  one  observes  that  the  articles  in  the  book 
were  contributed  to  the  Expositor  in  1900,  and  the 
article  in  the  Dictionary  bears  the  date  "  1899." 
In  the  latter  he  is  writing  on  "Language,"  and  is 
considering  07ily  the  linguistic  argument ;  and  in 
stating  that  no  verse  of  the  Old  Testament  can 
"probably"  be  named  which  is  "earlier  than  1100 
B.C.,"  he  is  referring  to  the  existing  text,  and  cannot 
be  supposed  to  deny  what  he  has  elsewhere  so 
positively  affirmed,  that  one  of  the  books,  or  at  any 
rate,  parts  of  it,  existed  much  earlier.  He  has  in 
mind  the  work  of  the  compilers,  not  the  original 
documents.  The  same  is  true  of  his  affirmation 
that  "there  seem  cogent  reasons  for  assigning  the 
fifth  book  of  the  Pentateuch  "  to  the  reign  of  Josiah. 
That  statement  probably  refers  to  the  date  when  it 
assumed  its  present  form  —  the  date  of  its  compila- 
tion, if  you  will.  My  contention,  let  me  repeat,  is 
not  against  the  composite  character  of  the  books  of 
the  Pentateuch,   nor  against  their  compilation  in 


32  THE  PENTATEUCH 

their  present  form,  at  a  late  date.  Those  ques- 
tions are,  to  my  mind,  of  quite  secondary  im- 
portance. But  the  vital  question  is.  Are  they 
trustworthy  records  of  the  Hebrew  race  and  of 
the  Hebrew  religion  ?  Dr.  Robertson,  whose  work 
on  "  The  Early  Religion  of  Israel  "  is  an  elabo- 
rate and  learned  argument  against  the  theory  of 
Wellhausen,  as  to  the  books  and  as  to  the  liis- 
tory  (even  in  its  modified  form,  as  stated  by  Dr. 
Briggs),  nevertheless  holds  that  "  there  is  nothing  to 
preclude  the  supposition  of  various  editings  of  the 
laws  at  different  times,  while  yet  the  system,  as  a 
whole,  and  even  the  three  separate  Codes,  had  a 
positive  basis  in  Mosaic  legislation"  (p.  386). 

I  conclude,  then,  that  instead  of  there  being 
"virtual  agreement"  between  Hommel,  Margo- 
liouth,  and  Sayce  on  the  one  side,  and  Wellhausen 
on  the  other,  there  is  in  reality  a  bottomless  gulf  of 
difference  between  them  upon  the  one  point  which 
to  me  is  vital  in  this  discussion,  \az.,  the  trust- 
worthiness of  the  Hebrew  records  preserved  in  the 
Pentateuch.^ 

THE    OUTLOOK 

What  is  the  outlook  in  the  field  of  Biblical  Criti- 
cism?    Will  Wellhausen  maintain  his  supremacy? 

*  I  have  not  quoted  from  Sayce  —  only  because  everybody 
knows  his  acute  opposition  to  the  modem  theory. 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  33 

Will  the  English  critics  who,  while  recoiling  from 
some  of  his  extreme  conclusions,  yet  on  the  whole 
belong  to  his  school  —  continue  to  be  dominant  in 
critical  circles,  in  the  mother  country  and  in 
America  ? 

There  are  good  reasons,  I  think,  for  anticipating 
that  this  will  not  be  the  case.  Since  1893  there  has 
been  a  noticeable  reaction,  and  it  appears  to  be 
gaining  in  strength  and  volume  year  by  year.  Some 
accomplished  scholars  who  ranged  themselves  then 
under  the  leadership  of  Wellhausen,  forsook  his 
standard  before  the  close  of  the  century,  as  I  have 
pointed  out  in  Lecture  I,  and  recently  Prof.  H.  H. 
Kuyper,  of  the  Free  University  of  Amsterdam,  has 
delivered  a  University  address  entitled,  "Develop- 
ment, or  Revelation,"  in  which  he  is  reported  to 
have  held  that  recent  archaeological  investigation  in 
Bible  lands  undermines  the  whole  subjective  recon- 
struction of  the  Old  Testament  religion  advocated 
by  the  advanced  critics.  Meanwhile,  scholars  of 
reputation  have  been  coming  forward  with  strong 
arguments  against  the  modern  view  of  the  Scriptural 
history.  In  addition  to  those  mentioned  in  the  text 
of  my  Lectures  I  may  mention  Dr.  Baxter,  Dr. 
Kleinert,  Prof.  Nosgen,  Dr.  Hoffman,  and  more  re- 
cently Dr.  Hermann  Strack,  Professor  of  Theology 
at  Berlin,  Dr.  Lotz,  Professor  of  Theology  in  the 
University  of  Erlangen,  and  Prof.  Van  Oettingen, 


34  THE  PENTATEUCH 

an  able  Lutheran  theologian.^  The  older  works  of 
the  late  Prof.  Wm.  Henry  Green,  of  Princeton, 
ought  also  to  be  mentioned.  His  masterly  review 
of  W.  Robertson  Smith  must  be  considered  by  the 
candid  reader  a  conclusive  refutation  of  Wellhausen 
as  interpreted  by  the  Scotch  professor.  The  great 
Princeton  critic,  though  dead,  yet  speaketh,  and  his 
arguments  in  at  least  some  phases  of  the  great 
critical  issue  will  yet  prevail.  Dr.  Fritz  Hommel 
and  Dr.  Wace  speak  with  the  greatest  appreciation 
of  liis  ability  and  of  his  "relentless  logic."  He  is 
quoted  with  great  respect  by  the  editor  of  the  new 
edition  just  published  of  the  Cyclopaedic  Handbook 
to  the  Bible. 

The  Dean  of  Canterbury  expresses  the  opinion 
that  "  destructive  criticism  is  receiving  a  real  check 
in  England,"  and  the  late  Prof.  Van  Oettingen, 
treating  of  modern  criticism  under  the  head  of 
Inspiration,  in  his  important  book  on  Lutheran 
Theology,  comes  to  the  same  conclusion.^ 

It  may  be  proper  to  say  here  that  I  by  no  means 
commit  myself  to  all  the  views  of  the  scholars  to 
whom  I  have  referred  in  the  following  Lectures  as 

^  I  would  also  call  special  attention  to  the  able  and  compre- 
hensive work  of  Prof.  Jas.  Orr,  "  The  Problem  of  the  Old 
Testament,"  published  since  these  Lectures  were  delivered.  It 
is  satisfactory  to  find  my  chief  positions  confirmed  by  so  accom- 
plished a  scholar. 

^  This  fact  I  owe  to  the  Dean  of  Canterbury. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  35 

allies  in  refuting  the  modern  theory  of  the  books 
and  of  the  history  of  ancient  Israel  which  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  name  of  Julius  Wellhausen.  Dr. 
Hommel,  Dr.  Dillmann,  Dr.  Klostermann,  Dr. 
Margoliouth,  and  others,  may  each  uphold  views  on 
some  points  of  this  discussion  to  which  I  could  by 
no  means  yield  adhesion.  The  words  of  Horace 
are  nowhere  more  applicable  than  in  the  field  of 
Biblical  criticism, 

"Nullius  addictus  jurare  in  verba  magistri," 

But  because  one  cannot  follow  subserviently  in 
the  footsteps  of  any  master  of  criticism,  one  is  not, 
for  that  reason,  debarred  from  citing  any  competent 
scholar  who  offers  sound  arguments  against  a  par- 
ticular view,  which  one  is  unable  to  accept.  Because, 
for  instance,  I  summon  Dillmann  as  a  witness  against 
the  post-exilic  date  of  the  Priestly  Code,  I  cannot  be 
faulted  because  I  do  not  agree  with  him  on  some  of 
the  other  critical  problems.^ 

In  conclusion  I  may  refer  to  Adolf  Harnack's 
famous  Preface  to  his  Chronologie  der  altchristlichen 
Literatur,  in  which,  after  characterizing  our  time  as 

i"I  am  not  concerned,"  says  Dr.  Wace,  "to  defend  all  of 
Dillmann's  opinions,  or  to  maintain  his  consistency,  but  at  least 
he  was  a  great  force.  He  described  himself  as  the  'brakesman' 
in  German  criticism,  and  by  this,  says  Count  Baudissin,  he  did 
not  mean  that  he  was  merely  'a  regulating  influence,'  but  he 
believed  that  'with  recent  critics  it  was  a  matter  of  driving  to 
ruin,  and  it  was  against  this  he  wisfied  to  gicard.' " 


36  THE  PENTATEUCH 

one  in  which  the  New  Testament  writings  had  been 
treated  as  a  tissue  of  illusions  and  falsifications,  he 
declared  that,  for  critical  science,  that  time  was 
past;  that  the  net  result  of  its  investigations  was  that 
the  tradition  of  the  Church  in  regard  to  the  early 
Christian  literature  was  in  the  main  reliable;  and 
that  that  literature  was  for  the  most  part  veracious 
and  trustworthy.  Such  a  conclusion  as  this  —  that 
the  critical  labors  of  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  have  resulted  in  a  definite  return  to  tradi- 
tion —  cannot  but  raise  the  question  whether  a 
similar  result  may  not  be  anticipated  as  regards 
the  Old  Testament  also,  and  so  the  next  genera- 
tion of  critics  may  conclude  that  the  most  ancient 
Hebrew  literature,  which  has  so  long  been  treated 
by  many  of  the  leading  critics  as  a  tissue  of  illusions 
and  falsifications,  is,  after  all,  a  veracious  and 
trustworthy  record,  according  to  the  tradition  of  the 
Jewish  and  the  Christian  churches  for  two  thousand 
years  and  more. 

Note.  —  Reference  is  made  on  p.  33  to  the  recent  work  of 
Dr.  Hermann  Strack  Die  Genesis,  and  to  his  Einleitung  in 
das  Alte  Testament,  1895,  in  which,  for  example,  after  stating 
the  view  of  the  "  Vatke-Wellhausen  "  school  as  to  the  origin  of 
Deuteronomy,  he  says  "  weighty  reasons  (wichtige  Grmide) 
speak  against  this  opinion"  (p.  57).  Both  these  works  are  pub- 
lished in  Munich. 


LECTURE  I 


"The  Pentateuch  accounts  for  the  mighty  fabric  of  the  Jewish 
faith  —  without  it,  the  whole  system  becomes  confused  and 
uninteUigible."  Dr.  Angus. 

"  Given  the  existence  of  the  Mosaic  institutions,  and  the  history 
of  Israel  is  intelligible  and  consistent.  Remove  them,  and  the 
history  at  once  becomes  a  dissolving  view:  all  that  we  know  is 
that  it  is  false,  and  each  successive  critic  has  his  own  peculiar 
ideas  as  to  how  much  is  fact  and  how  much  fable." 

J.  J.  Lias,  D.D. 

"There  are  Popes  in  the  Higher  Criticism  as  well  as  in  The- 
ology." Prof.  Satce. 

"Much  which  in  these  days  passes  for  'results  of  criticism'  is, 
in  tendency,  openly  destructive,  and  distinctly  rationalistic  in 
spirit.  It  disintegrates  the  Bible,  subverts  its  historical  founda- 
tions, and,  in  the  chaos  of  conflicting  theories,  leaves  the  mind 
in  utter  bewilderment  and  doubt." 

Prof.  Jas.  Okr,  D.D. 


38 


LECTURE  I 

In  beginning  my  lectures  on  the  Higher  Criticism 
of  the  Pentateuch,  I  am  reminded  that  it  is  just 
one  hundred  years  since  that  great  scholar,  the 
immortal  De  Wette,  as  he  has  been  called,^  who 
may  be  considered  the  direct  ancestor  of  the  now 
dominant  critical  theory,  published  his  epoch- 
making  book,  the  "Dissertatio  Critica."  In  that 
work  he  maintained,  as  the  Graf-Wellhausen  school 
does  to-day,  that  Deuteronomy  was  a  composition 
struck  off  in  the  reign  of  Josiah,  621  B.C.,  and  that 
the  Pentateuch  contains  no  history  at  all  but  only 
legend  and  poetry.  But  the  ancestry  of  the  preva- 
lent   critical    opinions    is    more    remote    than    this. 

*  By  Dr.  Saml.  Davidson,  "  Introduction  to  Old  Test.,"  Vol.  I, 
p.  131,  who  quotes  the  following  from  his  pen:  "  Pentateuchum 
non  esse  a  Moses  conscriptum,  sed  seriori  estate  ortum,  nostris 
diebus,  postquam  tam  multum  tamque  docte  atque  sagaciter 
hac  de  re  disputatum  est,  neminem  adhuc  esse  puto,  qui  neget, 
prseter  eos  qui  auctoritatis  suae  magis  tuendse  causa,  quam 
veritatis  studio  ducti,  contrariatn  sententiam  defendunt.  Neque 
tamen  satis  est  negare,  Mosem  Pentateuchi  auctorem  esse;  res 
eo  ducenda  est,  ut  statuamus,  diversorum  auctorum  scripts  in 
eo  volumine  esse  congesta  et  concinuata." 


40  THE  PENTATEUCH 

They  must  be  traced  to  Baruch  Spinoza,  the  excom- 
municated Jew,  the  father  of  modern  Pantheism, 
who,  as  early  as  1671,  pubHshed  the  opinion  that 
Ezra,  not  Moses,  was  the  author  of  the  so-called 
"Books  of  Moses."  Some,  indeed,  find  the  same 
thought  in  the  Apocrypha,  2  Esdras  xiv.  21-22, 
where  Ezra  prays,  "Lord,  ,  .  .  thy  law  is  burnt 
.  .  .  but  if  I  have  found  grace  before  Thee,  send 
the  Holy  Ghost  into  me,  and  I  shall  write  all  that 
hath  been  done  in  the  world  since  the  beginning, 
which  were  written  in  thy  law."  It  was  another 
man  of  Jewish  race,  though  of  Roman  Catholic 
faith,  Jean  Astruc,  the  French  physician,  who  in 
1753  gave  forth  the  view  that  Genesis  is  a  composite 
book,  made  up  from  two  documents,  the  Eloliistic 
and  the  Jehovistic;  while  the  theory  that  Deuter- 
onomy was  a  composition  of  the  reign  of  Josiah 
boasts  as  its  originator  the  famous  Tom  Paine, 
author  of  "The  Age  of  Reason." 

As  we  scan  the  history  of  the  modern  science 
which  Eichhorn  christened  "  The  Higher  Criticism," 
we  are  impressed  with  its  changeful,  shifting  char- 
acter. School  follows  school  in  quick  succession. 
The  "  Documentary  Hypothesis  "  is  followed  by  the 
"Fragmentary  Hypothesis,"  which  is  succeeded  by 
the  "Supplementary  Hypothesis,"  and  tliis  again 
by  the  "Development  Hypothesis."  De  Wette 
reigned   supreme   "for   several   decennia."     He   is, 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  41 

however,  deposed  and  the  crown  passes  to  Ewald.^ 
That  illustrious  scholar  is  in  time  discrowned,  and 
Hupfeldt  reigns  in  his  stead  (1853),  only  to  be 
himself  deposed,  and  the  kingdom  transferred  to 
Wellhausen  (1878),  for  whom  the  way  had  been 
prepared  by  the  Alsatian  scholar  Reuss  ^  (1833), 
and  his  pupil  Graf  (1868),  and  by  Kuenen  the 
Dutch  theologian  (1870). 

It  is  now  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  since  the 
critical  theories  of  Julius  Wellhausen  were  injected 
into  the  mind  of  the  English  speaking  world,  through 
the  medium  of  various  articles  in  the  ninth  edition 
of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  by  Wellhausen  him- 
self, and  by  Robertson  Smith,  his  disciple.  Within 
that  period  they  have  come  to  have  an  immense 
vogue  among  critical  scholars.  Indeed  his  school 
is  the  dominant  school  among  Old  Testament 
scholars  to-day.     So  confident  —  not  to  say  arrogant 

1  "So  far,"  says  Dr.  Body  ({.e.,  to  the  time  of  Hupfeld),  "the 
path  of  criticism  has  kept  true  to  the  main  position  held  by 
Astruc  at  the  first.  It  has  aimed  at  reconciUng  the  critical 
analysis  with  the  historical  trustworthiness  of  the  dissected 
records  .  .  .  and  has  uniformly  assigned  priority  of  date  to  the 
.  .  .  Elohistic  documents.  .  .  .  The  time  was  now  at  hand  when 
both  these  positions  were  to  be  completely  abandoned.  .  .  . 
The  new  Pentateuchal  controversy  begins.  Its  first  postulate  is 
the  complete  reversal  of  the  main  results  of  the  older  criticism 
which  gave  it  birth."  —  The  Permanent  Value  of  Genesis,  p.  60. 

2  Reuss  wrote  in  1833,  but  did  not  publish  till  1879,  his 
"L'Histoire  Sainte  et  La  Loi." 


42  THE  PENTATEUCH 

—  are  his  disciples,  that  they  are  disposed  to 
ignore  the  existence  of  any  other  school  of  criticism, 
and  to  assume  that  to  be  a  Higher  Critic  is  to  be, 
ex  vi  termini,  a  disciple  of  Wellhausen.  An  index 
of  the  dominance  of  these  critical  opinions  is  seen 
in  the  fact  that  not  only  are  they  supreme  in  the 
Encyclopsedia  Biblica,  edited  by  Dr.  Cheyne,  the 
mirror  of  the  most  extreme  and  destructive  criticism, 
but  they  have  also  largely  controlled  the  contributors 
to  the  more  conservative  Biblical  Dictionary  of  Dr. 
Hastings,  and  have  made  effective  lodgment  in  the 
pages  of  the  new  Jewish  Encyclopsedia,  the  eleventh 
volume  of  which  has  just  been  issued.  A  well-known 
American  scholar  declares  that  "the  scholarly 
world  has  definitely  adopted  "  the  Graf -Wellhausen 
analysis  of  the  books  and  of  the  legislation :  "  in  the 
field  of  scholarship  the  question  is  settled."  And 
Prof.  Kautsch,  of  Halle,  describes  the  theory  of 
Wellhausen  as  "one  of  the  verdicts  which  no  exe- 
getical  skill  can  now  hope  to  reverse,"  while  Prof. 
Cornhill  speaks  of  the  progress  of  his  theory  as 
"  an  uninterrupted  triumph." 

Nevertheless  it  is  my  purpose,  in  these  lectures, 
to  deny  that  this  critical  hypothesis  of  the  great 
German  scholar  is  a  finality,  and  to  give  reasons, 
which  I  hope  will  convince  your  judgment,  that 
there  are  just  grounds  for  this  denial.  In  setting 
my  hand  to  such  a  task  I  would  fain  emulate  the 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  43 

spirit  of  a  great  English  scholar  who  in  like  manner 
opposed  the  conclusions  of  the  famous  German 
critics  of  his  day,  —  De  Wette,  Bleek,  Ewald,  Bun- 
sen.  He  said  of  them,  "These  are  men  distin- 
guished by  indefatigable  research,  by  vast  knowledge 
of  the  Hebrew  language  and  of  the  cognate  tongues, 
by  seemingly  the  most  sincere  and  conscientious  love 
of  truth,  in  some  cases  ...  of  the  most  profound 
Christian  piety."  And  then,  as  to  why  he  opposed 
their  views,  he  said,  "  It  is  not,  I  trust,  from  igno- 
rance, nor  from  want  of  respectful  and  candid  exami- 
nation ...  I  trust,  too,  from  no  narrow-minded 
prejudice,  nor  from  superstitious  reverence  for  ancient 
opinions,  nor  from  any  religious  timidity."  ^  What 
that  illustrious  historian  felt  then,  I  feel  to-day. 
Only  it  is  not  so  much  my  own  arguments  upon 
which  I  rely,  as  the  arguments  of  scholars  of  great 
ability,  who  have  con\'inced  me  that  many  of  the 
alleged  "  results  "  which  Wellhausen  and  his  school 
have  reached,  rest  upon  a  very  insecure  foundation, 
and  will  not  stand  as  "finalities  of  scholar sliip." 

Experience  does  not  justify  us  in  concluding  that 
Right  and  Truth  are  always  on  the  side  of  the 
heaviest  battalions  of  scholarship.  Wellhausen  him- 
self points  out  that  "  for  several  decennia  all  who  were 
open  to  critical  ideas  at  all  stood  under  De  Wette's 

» Dean  Milman,  "  History  of  the  Jews,"  Vol.  I,  p.  177,  note. 
(4th  Edition,  1866.) 


44  THE  PENTATEUCH 

influence  "  *  —  yet  the  reaction  came  and  that  great 
scholar's  influence  waned  and  sank.  Wlio  shall  say 
that  a  similar  fate  does  not  await  Wellhausen  him- 
self ?  He  has  been  supreme  "  for  several  decennia," 
but  there  are  not  lacking  signs  of  his  eclipse. 

Some  years  ago  I  took  up  a  volume  of  Essays 
pubUshed  by  John  Fiske  in  1876.^  In  that  volume, 
side  by  side  with  his  beautiful  and  inspiring  discus- 
sion of  Immortality,  I  found  an  essay  upon  "The 
Jesus  of  History,"  which  I  confess  was  to  me  any- 
thing but  "inspiring."  That  essay  began  by  de- 
claring the  writer's  acceptance  of  the  "results" 
reached  by  the  Tubingen  school,  as  a  finality  of 
scholarsliip  —  as  furnishing  the  basis  and  starting- 
point  for  a  study  of  the  life  and  work  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  I  need  not  remind  you  how  grave  was 
Mr.  Fiske's  mistake  in  building  upon  such  a  foun- 
dation. The  then  triumphant  Tubingen  theory  has 
been  completely  discredited,  and  its  epitaph  tersely 
written  in  the  words  "  Tubingen  fuit ! "  Is  it  pre- 
sumptuous to  suggest  that  the  fate  that  befell 
Christian  Baur  may  yet  overtake  Julius  Wellhausen  ?  ^ 

1  Art.  "Pentateuch,"  Encyc.  Brit.,  p.  505. 

2  "The  Unseen  World." 

^  The  Dean  of  Canterbury,  in  a  recent  letter,  received  since 
the  above  was  written,  calls  my  attention  to  the  opinion  expressed 
by  the  late  Professor  Van  Oettingen,  in  his  recently  published 
work  on  Lutheran  Theology,  to  wit,  "that  Wellhausen  must  go 
the  way  of  Baur." 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  45 

This  result  may  be  anticipated  on  logical  principles, 
when  it  is  observed  that  Wellhausen's  "  Develop- 
ment Hypothesis"  is  philosophically  akin  to  the 
Tubingen  theory.  An  able  critic  of  our  own  com- 
munion calls  attention  to  this.  He  says:  "The 
whole  theory  can  rightly  be  understood  only  when 
it  takes  its  place,  in  company  with  the  New  Testa- 
ment criticism  of  Baur  and  Strauss,  as  an  ultimate 
result  of  the  Hegelian  Philosophy.  ...  In  fact,  the 
same  year,  1835,  which  saw  the  publication  of  Baur's 
'Die  Christliche  Gnosis,'  and  of  the  original  edi- 
tion of  the  'Leben  Jesu,'  of  Strauss,  was  marked 
by  the  issue  of  Vatke's  'Biblische  Theologie,'  in 
which,  avowedly  from  the  Hegelian  standpoint,  he 
contended  that  the  order  of  development  of  the 
Israelitish  religion  had  been  wrongly  apprehended, 
and  that  henceforth  Prophetism  and  Mosaism  must 
change  places."  ("The  Permanent  Value  of 
Genesis,"  C.  W.  E.  Body,  D.C.L.,  pp.  60,  61.) 

That  scholar's  theory  is  already  challenged  by  a 
considerable  and  growing  school  of  accomplished 
scholars  and  critics,  one  of  whom  ^  boldly  predicts 
that  "the  hypothesis  (of  Wellhausen)  will  not  long 
be  regarded  by  any  number  of  scholars  as  a  satis- 
factory solution  of  the  question  of  the  composition 
of  the  Pentateuch." 

Writing  in  1893,  Professor  Briggs,  having  declared 
1  Dr.  Chas.  H.  Wright,  "Introduction  to  the  O.  T.,"  p.  97. 


46  THE  PENTATEUCH 

his  adhesion  to  the  critical  analysis  of  the  literary 
documents  and  legislation  of  the  Pentateuch,  calls 
a  most  formidable  roll  of  European  and  American 
scholars  who  accept  that  analysis,  affirms  that  they 
are  sustained  by  the  unanimous  voice  of  the  Hebrew 
scholars  of  Europe,  and  triumphantly  demands, 
"Where  are  the  Professors  in  the  Old  Testament 
Department  in  the  Universities  and  Colleges  of 
Europe  who  hold  a  different  view  ? "  ^ 

Well,  it  was  soon  possible  to  answer  this  challenge 
by  pointing  to  D.  S.  Margoliouth,  Laudian  Professor 
of  Arabic  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  and  to  Dr. 
James  Robertson,  Professor  of  Oriental  Languages 
in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  to  Dr.  Fritz 
Hommel,  Professor  of  Semitic  Languages,  Univer- 
sity of  Munich,  and  to  A.  H.  Sayce,  Professor  of 
Semitic  Languages,  University  of  Oxford,  all  of 
whom  arrayed  themselves  in  opposition  to  the  Well- 
hausen  critical  analysis  of  the  documents  and  the 
legislation.  Moreover,  several  of  the  scholars  whom 
Dr.  Briggs  puts  in  his  roll  of  W^ellhausen  adherents, 
within  a  short  time  thereafter  changed  their  views, 
and  took  strong  ground  on  the  opposite  side.  Among 
these  was  the  illustrious  archseologist,  Dr.  Hommel, 
who  in  1897  published  his  "Ancient  Hebrew  Tradi- 
tion" declaring  his  new  attitude.  Another  was 
Prof.  C.  Von  Orelli  of  Bole,  who  in  1899  stood 
iThe  "Hexateuch,"  pp.  94,  144. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  47 

sponsor  for  Wilhelm  Moller's  monograph/  "Are 
the  Critics  Right?"  in  which  that  young  scholar 
renounced  his  allegiance  to  Wellhausen.  Another 
was  Prof.  Klostermann  of  Kiel,  who  that  very  year, 
1893,  issued  his  work  on  Deuteronomy,  controvert- 
ing Wellhausen's  views.  Dr.  Driver  has  recently 
sought  to  weaken  the  force  of  the  appeal  to  Prof. 
Klostermann,  by  pointing  out  that  he  accepts  the 
composite  character  of  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch, 
as  when  he  says  that  P  is  distinct  from  JE, 
that  JE  is  composite,  and  that  the  discourses  of 
Deuteronomy  as  we  have  them  "  are  the  expansion 
and  translation  into  the  religious  phraseology  of  the 
age  of  the  old  Law  book  found  by  Hilkiah  in  the 
Temple." 

But  all  tliis  does  not  touch  the  real  issue  between 
him  and  Wellhausen.  In  Klostermann's  view  the 
book  found  by  Hilkiah  was  "The  old  Law  book," 
whereas  Wellhausen  regards  it  as  a  newly  composed 
book.  The  two  men  occupy  opposite  poles  of 
thought.  The  one  holds  the  book  historical  and 
trustworthy  —  the  other  holds  it  unhistorical.  The 
one  holds  the  discourses  to  be  the  expansion  of 
discourses  actually  delivered  by  Moses  in  the  situa- 
tions described  —  the  other  that  the  discourses  and 
the  situations  too  were  invented  without  any  real 

*  "  Historische-Kritische  Bedenken  gegen  die  Graf-Wellhau- 
sen'sche  Hypothese." 


48  THE  PENTATEUCH 

historical  basis.  Another  scholar  claimed  by  Dr. 
Briggs  is  Kohler,  of  Erlangen:  yet  Moller  tells  us 
it  was  he  who  first  directed  his  attention  to  the 
weakness  of  the  Wellhausen  positions.  Within  a 
year  another  distinguished  orientalist,  M.  Hsdevy, 
is  reported  to  have  publicly  repudiated  the  views  of 
the  dominant  school. 

These  and  other  indications  seem  to  show  that 
Prof.  Sayce  was  right  when  he  predicted  the  ebb  of 
the  wave  of  historical  skepticism,  and  encouraged 
the  hope  that  those  who  cannot  accept  the  Well- 
hausen analysis  of  the  literary  documents  and  legis- 
lation of  the  Pentateuch  will  no  longer  occupy  so 
lonely  a  position  among  critical  scholars  as  they 
have  done. 

Perhaps,  then,  we  may  take  up  our  task  without 
feeling  that  we  are  attempting  the  impossible, 
attacking  an  impregnable  position,  or  leading  a 
forlorn  hope. 

Let  me  on  the  threshold  of  our  discussion  put  you 
on  your  guard  against  an  assumption  frequently 
made  by  writers  in  both  the  secular  and  the  religious 
press,  that  there  is  no  middle  ground  between  the 
traditional  \aew  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the 
critical  view  of  the  Graf- Wellhausen  school.  Thus 
a  representative  writer  some  while  ago  said: 

"  The  real  conflict  is  between  modern  scholarship 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  49 

and  the  traditional  view  —  between  reason  and 
authority."  "  It  is  the  battle  of  truth  against  preju- 
dice." We  are  assured  that  "practically  all  Old 
Testament  scholars"  have  accepted  the  Wellhausen 
theory;  and  any  attempt  to  contest  its  finality  is  at 
once  declared  to  be  "the  protest  of  theological 
prejudice  against  the  application  to  Bible  study  of 
modern  methods  of  historical,  linguistic,  archaeolog- 
ical and  literary  investigation."  ^  In  other  words, 
there  are  two,  and  only  two,  classes  of  thinkers  on 
this  subject,  —  the  traditionalists  and  the  disciples 
of  Wellhausen.  If  you  would  be  one  of  the  guild  of 
higher  critics,  it  is  not  enough  to  pursue  the  historical 
method  of  Biblical  study  —  you  must  accept  a 
certain  set  of  "results,"  you  must  pronounce  the 
shibboleth  of  a  certain  school,  you  must  bow  down 
to  the  majority.  Otherwise  you  are  in  the  army  of 
Prejudice:  Truth  disowns  you! 

The  great  Lightfoot,  in  introducing  his  monu- 
mental work  on  the  Ignatian  Epistles,  refers  to 
"  the  moral  intimidation  "  of  certain  eminent  writers 
who  seemed  to  wish  to  foreclose  the  further  investi- 
gation of  the  Ignatian  problem  by  the  iterated 
assertion  that "  all  impartial  critics  "  have  condemned 
those  Epistles  as  spurious. 

We  meet  the  same  kind  of  "moral  intimidation" 
in  the  pages  of  critics  who  seem  to  desire  to  foreclose 
1  The  Churchman,  Nov.  4,  1095,  p.  704. 


50  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  critical  problems  of  the  Pentateuch  by  loudly 
proclaiming  that  all  impartial  critics  are  substan- 
tially agreed  in  accepting  the  main  features  of  the 
modem  view  of  the  analysis  and  structure  of  those 
ancient  documents  which  is  associated  with  the 
name  of  Wellhausen. 

But  in  the  interests  of  clear  thinking,  and  of  truth 
itself,  it  must  be  said  that  the  above  is  not  a  scientific 
classification.  It  smacks  of  literary  intolerance. 
There  is  a  great  company  of  divines  and  scholars 
who  are  found  neither  in  the  one  nor  the  other  of 
these  camps.  They  vigorously  reject  the  hypothesis 
which  turns  the  books  of  the  Bible  topsy-turvy, 
putting  the  Prophets  before  the  Law,  making 
Deuteronomy,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  pious 
fraud  in  the  reign  of  Josiah,  621  b.c.,^  and  sub- 
stantially the  rest  of  the  Pentateuch  a  work  of  the 

1  Wellhausen,  in  the  Introduction  to  his  "  Prologomena,"  says 
that  "in  all  centres  where  scientific  results  may  hope  for  recog- 
nition, it  is  admitted  that  Deuteronomy  was  written  at  the  time 
in  which  it  was  discovered,  and  was  employed  as  a  basis  for  the 
reforms  introduced  by  King  Josiah. "  Upon  which  Prof.  Hommel 
remarks,  "In  other  words,  however  pious  the  intention  may  have 
been,  a  downright  forgery  on  a  grand  scale  had  been  carried 
out."  ("The  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition,"  p.  4.)  He  adds  that 
"Prof.  Klost^rmann  has  recently  shown  most  conclusively  that 
the  narrative  of  the  discovery  of  a  legal  code  in  the  time  of 
Josiah,  which  is  rightly  taken  to  refer  to  Deuteronomy,  bears  the 
impress  of  absolute  credibility,  and  consequently  excludes  the 
possibility  of  any  such  subtle  deception  as  that  predicated  by 
critics  of  the  modern  school."     {Id.  p.  10.) 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  51 

imagination  of  the  time  of  Ezra;*  which  in  ejffect 
destroys  the  historical  ground  that  underhes  the 
Jewish  rehgion  and  theocracy,  which  eviscerates  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  of  all  true  prophecy,  and  of  their 
traditional  supernatural  origin  and  authority;  and 
which,  finally,  expels  the  sweet  psalmist  of  Israel 
from  the  Psalter,  making  it  the  Psalm-Book  of  the 
second  temple:  this  hypothesis,  I  say,  these  men 
reject,  yet  they  themselves  apply  to  the  study  of  the 
Bible  the  principles  and  methods  of  the  Higher 
Criticism.  They  have  no  fear  of  the  ultimate  result 
of  letting  in  all  the  light  that  history  and  philology 
and  archaeology  can  throw  upon  the  Bible. 

With  this  view  your  lecturer  is  in  full  sympathy. 
I  stand  for  the  freest  investigation  of  the  Bible. 
As  a  Protestant  theologian  I  abhor  the  idea  of 
fettering  the  reason.  Let  the  light  shine.  "Prove 
all  things,  hold  fast  that  which  is  good."  I  am  not 
embarked  upon  any  cast-iron  theory  of  inspiration 
which  may  conceivably  be  cracked  or  broken  in 
the  process  of  free  inquiry.  I  even  sympathize 
with  the  avowal  of  a  late  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
(Benson)  that  the  Church  is  bringing  home  rich 
sheaves  from  the  much  dreaded  fields  of  criticism. 

But  when  I  have  said  this,  there  is  something  else 

1  Hommel  says  the  Priestly  Code  "is  notoriously  regarded  by 
the  Wellhausen  school  as  a  post-exilic  forgery."  —  The  Ancient 
Hebrew  Tradition,  p.  25. 


52  THE  PENTATEUCH 

which  I  must  also  say:  Though  we  should  be  open- 
minded  to  truth  from  whatever  quarter  it  comes, 
and  though  we  should  be  prepared  to  accept  conclu- 
sions that  are  based  on  sound  reasoning,  we  must 
never  for  a  moment  forget  that  the  onus  probajidi 
rests  upon  those  who  ask  us  to  abandon  beliefs 
which  the  Jewish  and  Christian  churches  have 
cherished  for  over  two  thousand  years.  They  who 
advocate  revolutionary  ideas,  whether  in  govern- 
ment, in  scholarship,  or  in  religion,  must  show  good 
cause,  and  their  arguments  must  possess  conclusive, 
even  overwhelming  force.  Wise  men  will  not  be 
lightly  persuaded  to  overthrow  long  established 
institutions,  or  to  abandon  long  inherited  beliefs. 
And  if  we  are  summoned  by  the  critics  to  revolu- 
tionize our  whole  conception  of  the  structure  and 
nature  and  significance  of  the  Scriptures,  we  have  a 
right  to  demand  proof  —  clear,  strong,  conclusive, 
without  a  shadow  of  suspicion  on  its  reality  or  its 
suflSciency. 

We  do  not  profess,  then,  to  approach  the  criticism 
of  the  Bible  without  any  prepossession.  We  come, 
indeed,  with  open  minds,  but  we  come  as  Christians. 
Our  minds  are  not  as  a  tabula  rasa  :  no,  the  Christian 
creed  is  graven  upon  them.  We  could  not,  if  we 
would,  erase  it  —  or  just  ignore  it  for  the  purposes 
of  the  investigation.  And  that  creed,  graven  on  our 
hearts,  tested  by  experience,  proven  by  its  power 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  53 

over  our  lives,  must  inevitably  influence  our  judg- 
ment in  weighing  the  validity  of  some  of  the  most 
important    arguments    in    the    critical    discussion. 
Here  I  avail  myself  of  some  weighty  words  of  an 
illustrious   writer,   the  late  Bishop   Stubbs:   "The 
Bible  is  not  like  any  other  book;  no  other  book 
comes  to  us  with  a  claim  authorized  by  the  Church 
of  our  baptism  as  containing  the  Word  of  God  .  .  . 
This  means  that  it  is  to  us  a  paramount  witness  of 
Truth  .  .  .  The  whole  form  and  character  of  our 
religious  thought  is  framed  on  it  ...  It  is  impossi- 
ble for  those  who  have  been  so  taught  to  put  them- 
selves in  a  neutral  or  impartial  attitude  regarding  it, 
without  such  a  strain,  such  a  wrench  of  mental  and 
moral  force,  as  drives  them  past  the  central  station 
of  fair  judgment.  .  .  .  Indifference  to  Holy  Scrip- 
ture means  disregard  for  it:  We  cannot  treat  it  as 
any  other  book,  even  if  it  were  susceptible  of  such 
treatment:  but  it  is  like  none  other,  and,  indeed,  it 
is  the  fact  that  it  is  like  none  other  that  has  led 
critics  to  apply  to  it  methods  of  arbitrary,  wanton, 
and  conjectural  criticism,  which  applied  to  Greek, 
or  Roman,  or  even  Anglo-Saxon  literature  would 
be  laughed  out  of  court."  ^ 

In  this  connection  I  would  call  attention  to  the 
prepossessions  which  lie  behind  some  of  the  most 

>  Bishop  Stubbs's  Visitation  Charge,  May,  1893,  p.  138.     (Re- 
peated in  "  Ordination  Addresses,"  pp.  147,  148.) 


54  THE  PENTATEUCH 

fundamental  conclusions  of  the  extreme  school  with 
which  we  are  concerned  in  these  lectures.  One  of 
the  axioms  of  the  criticism  of  Kuenen  and  Well- 
hausen  is  that  there  can  be  no  real  prediction  of 
future  events  by  divine  revelation,  and  that  no 
narrative  embodying  a  supernatural  occurrence  is 
credible.  The  critical  theory  has  been  thus  formu- 
lated :  "  The  representation  of  a  course  of  history  is 
a  priori  to  be  regarded  as  untrue  and  unhistorical 
if  supernatural  factors  interpose  in  it."  *  Ernest 
Renan  says,  "A  supernatural  account  cannot  be 
admitted  as  such;  it  always  implies  credulity  or 
imposture."  And  Kuenen,  "Their  representations, 
to  put  it  in  a  word,  are  utterly  unhistorical,  and 
therefore  cannot  have  been  committed  to  writing 
until  centuries  after  Moses  and  Joshua."  Thus 
critical  questions  are  settled  by  the  a  priori 
assumption  that  whatever  is  set  down  as  super- 
natural must  be  unhistorical,  and  that  every 
passage  containing  prediction  of  future  events 
must  have  been  written  subsequent  to  the  events 
described. 

Now,  in  the  search  after  truth,  the  wise  man  will 
consider  the  antecedents  and  prepossessions  of  the 
witnesses,  and  it  is  not  narrowness  or  dogmatic 
prejudice,  but  a  precaution  due  to  scientific  accuracy, 

*  Frank,  "  Geschichte  und  Kritik  der  neuen  Theologie," 
p.  289,  quoted  by  Whitelaw. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  55 

for  the  Christian  student  to  take  note  of  this  natural- 
istic bias  on  the  part  of  some  eminent  scholars, 
whose  opinions  have  great  weight  in  the  critical 
world.  Their  critical  judgments  are  colored  and 
conditioned  by  this  anti-supernatural  bias,  and  we 
are  bound,  as  honest  men,  to  consider  how  far  their 
arguments  are  invalidated  and  their  conclusions 
vitiated  by  it. 

As  to  the  seriousness  of  the  issue  ultimately  in- 
volved in  the  modern  critical  theory,  I  beg  to  refer 
to  the  judgment  expressed  concerning  Wellhausen's 
views  by  a  scholar  far  removed,  indeed,  from  tra- 
ditionalism, I  mean  Prof.  G.  T.  Ladd :  "  It  is  evident 
that  such  views  of  the  Pentateuch,  on  account  of 
the  naturalistic  philosophy  which  underlies  and 
shapes  the  criticism  upon  which  they  depend,  are 
calculated  to  exercise  a  profound  influence  upon 
the  entire  theological  conception  of  the  Bible.  They 
do  not  simply  tend  to  change  further  those  theories 
of  the  nature  of  biblical  inspiration  and  infallibility, 
which  belong  to  the  post-reformation  dogma;  they 
rather  take  hold  upon  the  very  idea  of  biblical 
revelation,  and  upon  the  fundamental  question  of 
the  general  credence  to  be  given  to  the  records  of 
an  alleged  supernatural  religion."  * 

Such  is  the  radical  and  vital  character  of  the  issue 
at  stake  in  the  acceptance  of  the  critical  opinions 

1  "Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture,"  Vol.  II,  p.  241,  1883. 


56  THE  PENTATEUCH 

of  Julius  Wellhausen.  It  is  not  the  date,  or  the 
authorship,  or  the  structure  of  the  books  of  the  Bible, 
but  "  the  very  idea  of  biblical  revelation  "  and  the 
very  existence  of  a  supernatural  religion. 

Just  here  let  nae  remind  you  that  I  am  speaking 
as  a  Christian  student  to  men  who  are  also  Christian 
students.  In  our  critical  studies  we  are  not  dis- 
cussing the  evidences  of  Christianity:  we  are  not 
trying  to  convince  unbelievers  of  the  truth  of  our 
holy  religion.  In  that  case  we  could  not  assume 
the  Christian  ground.  We  could  not  ask  of  them 
any  concession  to  our  convictions  as  Christian  men 
about  the  reality  of  the  supernatural,  or  the  authority 
of  Christ. 

Neither  am  I,  in  these  Lectures,  addressing  myself 
to  agnostics,  or  to  Buddhists,  or  to  the  disciples  of 
Confucius,  but  to  Christian  students,  who  must 
necessarily  approach  the  study  of  the  critical  ques- 
tions as  convinced  believers,  nay  as  men  who  believe 
themselves  inwardly  moved  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to 
take  upon  them  the  oflSce  of  ministers  of  Christ. 
"  The  Christian  critic,"  it  has  been  well  said,  by  an 
able  scholar,  "ought  to  start  from  the  basis  of  the 
New  Testament,"  and  hence  he  cannot  consent  to 
judge  the  critical  questions  about  the  Old  Testament 
from  the  naturalistic  standpoint,  which  discredits 
miracle  and  prophecy,  —  although,  at  the  same  time, 
he  is  equally  bound  to  conduct  his  investigations 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  57 

without  regard  to  any  theory  of  inspiration  which 
he  may  have  formulated. 

We  cannot,  indeed,  demand  that  the  unbehev- 
ing  critic  should  accept  our  Christian  standpoint  in 
his  critical  investigations  any  more  than  we  can 
accept  his  naturalistic  point  of  view.  But  my  con- 
cern here  is  not  with  him,  but  with  men  who  are 
believers,  and  who  desire  some  guidance  in  judg- 
ing of  the  critical  theories  so  much  in  vogue  at 
the  present  day.  And  speaking  to  such,  it  is  right 
to  ask  the  question,  WTiy  should  we  sit  at  the 
feet  of  men  who  begin  their  critical  investigations 
by  assuming  that  neither  miracle  nor  prophecy  is 
possible  ? 

Another  cautionary  signal  I  feel  in  duty  bound  to 
show  for  the  guidance  of  the  earnest  seeker  after 
truth  in  these  critical  discussions  is  this: 

You  will  find  on  the  side  of  the  remarkable 
hypothesis  which  I  am  making  bold  to  challenge, 
an  immense  array  of  able  and  accomplished  scholars. 
You  will  be  told  that  Wellhausen's  theory  has 
passed  the  experimental  stage:  it  is  no  longer  a 
subject  for  debate:  it  is  one  of  the  accepted  finalities 
of  scholarship.  Now  lest  your  judgment  be  over- 
borne by  the  weight  of  what  we  may  call  this  tra- 
dition of  scholarship,  it  is  well  to  recall  the  fact 
that  a  number  of  grievous  mistakes  have,  within 


58  THE  PENTATEUCH 

recent  years,  been  brought  home  to  this  triumphant 
school  of  critics,  which  should  put  us  on  our  guard 
against  accepting  their  conclusions  too  readily. 
Let  me  give  one  or  two  instances: 

1.  Writers  of  this  school  formerly  based  their 
skepticism  concerning  the  Mosaic  authorship,  or 
date,  of  the  Pentateuch  on  the  assumption  that  the 
age  of  the  Hebrew  lawgiver  was  not  a  literary  age. 
The  literary  use  of  writing  could  not  have  been 
known  to  an  Israelite  at  that  epoch.  Therefore 
these  books  could  not  have  originated  then.  Vatke, 
one  of  Wellhausen's  oracles,  denied  that  the  age  of 
Moses  had  the  knowledge  of  writing.  Similar  was 
the  view  of  Wellhausen  himself.  He  says,  "  Writing 
had  been  practised  earlier  than  850-750,  but  only 
in  formal  instruments,  mainly  on  stone."  (Article 
"Israel,"  Encyc.  Brit.,  p.  408). 

But  the  Tel  el-Amarna  correspondence,  uncovered 
by  the  spade  of  the  archaeologist  in  1887-88,  revealed 
the  fact  that  in  the  century  before  the  Exodus, 
Palestine  was  a  land  of  books  and  schools.  Thus 
the  hypothesis  for  wliich  the  critics  claimed  a 
consensus  of  scholarship  was  completely  overturned, 
and  assertions  like  that  of  Kautsch,  that  "  there  was 
not,  and  could  not  be,  much  writing  in  the  early 
days  of  Jewish  history,"  shown  to  have  no  founda- 
tion. Such  a  colossal  and  fundamental  mistake  as 
this  may  well  caution  us  not  to  accept  too  trustfully 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  59 

the  conclusions  now  urged  by  the  same  critics  as 
final  and  unimpeachable. 

2.  Another  instance  in  point:  It  is  a  common 
opinion  among  critics  of  this  school  that  there  is  no 
history  in  the  first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis.  But 
a  few  years  ago  they  drew  the  historical  line  farther 
down  the  stream  of  the  narrative:  they  looked  upon 
the  fourteenth  chapter  of  Genesis  as  unhistorical. 
The  campaign  of  Chedorlaomer  was  a  pure  inven- 
tion :  the  names  of  the  kings  mentioned  in  the  story 
"  were  resolved  into  etymological  puns."  One  emi- 
nent orientalist  pronounced  this  chapter  to  be  "a 
fantastic  grouping  together  of  names  .  .  .  expressly 
invented  for  the  occasion,"  and  the  critics  straight- 
way adopted  this  view.  The  whole  chapter  was 
the  invention  of  a  later  age,  —  nothing  of  history 
about  it!  But  archaeological  scholars  by  and  by 
were  able  to  show  from  the  cuneiform  inscriptions 
that  these  strange  names  were  historical,  and  there 
had  been  a  king  of  Elam,  Chederlaomer,  who  held 
supremacy  over  Palestine.^  So  the  critics  were 
compelled  to  acknowledge  their  error;  but  they  then 
put  forward  a  new  hypothesis,  that  "the  Jew  who 
inserted  Genesis  xiv.,  one  of  the  latest  portions  of 
the  whole  Pentateuch,  in  its  present  position,  must 
have  obtained  in  Babylon  exact  information  in 
regard  to  the  early  history  of  the  country,  and  for 
1  Cf.  Sayce,  "Higher  Criticism  and  the  Monuments,"  p.  161. 


60  THE  PENTATEUCH 

some  reason  which  we  are  unable  to  fathom  mixed 
up  Abraham  with  the  history  of  Kudur  Lagamar."  ^ 
Dr.  Fritz  Hommel,  the  illustrious  orientalist  of 
Munich,  tells  us  that  this  fourteenth  chapter  of 
Genesis  has  come  to  be  a  sort  of  Shibboleth  for  the 
two  leading  schools  of  Old  Testament  critics," 
Id.  p.  164,  and  he  adds,  "The  authenticity  of  a 
narrative  such  as  that  ...  is  an  unanswerable 
criticism  upon  the  views  which  are  now  in  fashion 
with  regard  to  the  credibility  of  the  ancient  Hebrew 
tradition."  And  how  do  the  negative  critics  deal 
with  it?  Certainly  in  very  inconsistent  fashion. 
Dr.  Peters,  for  instance,  admits  that  Amraphel, 
Arioch,  and  Tidal,  are  historical  personages,  and 
that  the  story  "probably  contains  a  reminiscence  of 
actual  events."  But  he  denies  that  Abraham  was 
an  historical  character.  On  this  a  recent  reviewer 
in  the  Guardian  asks  Dr.  Peters  this  pertinent 
question :  "  How  is  it  that  the  names  are  unreal  on 
the  Hebrew  side  but  historical  on  the  side  of  the 
foes  ?  If  the  invaders  were  individuals,  does  not 
this  justify  the  expectation  that  the  defenders  were 
individuals  also,  and  that  Abraham  and  Lot  were 
as  much  real  persons  as  Amraphel  and  his  allies.?" 
3.  Between  the  years  1896  and  1900  a  document 
was  discovered,  since  known  as  the  Cairene  Eccle- 
siasticus,  and  "was  accepted  by  all  the  leading 
>  Meyer,  quoted  by  Hommel,  Id.  p.  161. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  61 

Hebraists  of  the  time  as  a  work  of  the  second 
century  B.C.,  whence  the  existing  Greek  and  Syriac 
translations  were  derived."  But,  in  fact,  it  has  been 
shown  to  date  from  the  eleventh  century  after  Christ, 
and  to  have  been  compiled  from  those  two  existing 
translations. 

Upon  this  D.  S.  Margohouth,  Laudian  Professor 
of  Arabic  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  remarks, 
"The  Ecclesiasticus  experiment  was  forced  on  the 
Hebraists  of  our  time,  and,  though  an  easy  problem, 
belonged  to  precisely  the  same  region  as  that  in 
which  the  criticism  of  our  time  was  accustomed  to 
run  riot.  And  it  resulted  in  hopeless  failure."  And 
this  brilliant  scholar  concludes  his  essay  in  these 
words : 

"In  differing  about  the  date  and  analysis  of 
Hebrew  documents  from  a  school  which  could  be 
deceived  for  a  day  by  this  document  .  .  .  and  could 
spend  a  year  in  defending  it,  I  do  not  seem  to 
myself  to  be  incurring  any  serious  risk."  ^  Mistakes 
such  as  these  —  of  so  serious  a  nature  —  may  very 
properly  be  noted  by  the  student,  as  showing  that 
conclusions  which  claim  a  large  consensus  of  expert 
scholarship  may  after  all  turn  out  to  be  erroneous. 

In  order  to  emphasize  the  caution,  I  shall  now 
direct  attention  to  the  judgment  pronounced  upon 
»  "  Lines  of  Defence  of  the  Biblical  Revelation,"  pp.  294. 309. 


62  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  critical  scholarship  of  our  generation  by  several 
scholars  whose  opinion  must  carry  great  weight. 
Prof.  Ramsay,  the  famous  author  of  "St.  Paul  the 
Traveller  and  the  Roman  Citizen,"  thus  expresses 
himself  in  the  Preface  to  that  work: 

"There  is  no  class  of  literary  productions  in  our 
century  [the  nineteenth]  in  which  there  is  such  an 
enormous  preponderance  of  error  and  bad  judgment 
as  in  that  of  historical  criticism.  To  some  of  our 
critics  Herodotus  is  the  Father  of  History,  to  others 
he  is  an  inaccurate  reproducer  of  uneducated  gossip ! 
One  writer  at  portentous  length  shows  up  the 
weakness  of  Thucydides,  another  can  see  no  fault 
in  him"  (p.  3).  And  the  late  Bishop  Lightfoot  — 
that  illustrious  scholar  of  the  Victorian  era  —  in 
the  course  of  his  overwhelming  reply  to  a  famous 
attack  on  Christianity,  expressed  the  opinion  that 
the  historical  sense  of  eighteen  centuries  is  more  to 
be  depended  on  "than  the  critical  insight  of  a 
section  of  men  in  one  late  half  century."  He 
compares  the  negative  school  of  critics  with  the 
Rabbis,  and  thinks  their  work  as  "perverse  and 
unreal"  as  theirs,  and  he  anticipates  for  it  a  like 
fate.  Referring  to  German  critical  literature,  he 
says,  nowhere,  in  any  literature,  does  he  know 
of  such  a  mass  of  absurdities  as  have  been  heaped 
together  by  some  of  the  most  able  and  learned 
German    critics    in    connection    with    the    names 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  63 

Euodias  and  Syntyche  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Philip- 
pians.^ 

To  these  weighty  opinions  on  the  critical  scholar- 
ship of  the  age,  I  will  now  add  some  citations  of 
expert  opinion  upon  the  particular  hypothesis  which 
directly  concerns  us. 

Prof.  Sayce,  of  Oxford,  having  affirmed  that  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  "witnessing 
the  ebb  of  a  wave  of  historical  skepticism  which 
began  to  flow  more  than  a  century  ago,"  gave  his 
judgment  upon  the  general  question  in  these  words : 

"The  higher  critic  may  be  right  in  holding  that 
the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament  in  their 
present  form  are  compilations  of  comparatively  late 
date,  but  he  is  no  longer  justified  in  denying  that 
the  materials  they  embody  may  be  contemporaneous 
with  the  events  recorded  in  them." 

This,  I  may  remark,  flatly  contravenes  the  con- 
clusions of  Dr.  Driver  in  his  Commentary  on 
Genesis.  Dr.  Fritz  Hommel  writes,  "According  to 
the  principles  put  forth  by  Meyer  in  his  historical 
capacity,  the  theory  of  the  history  of  Israel  which 
Reuss,  Graf,  and  Wellhausen  have  built  up  with 
such  wonderful  ingenuity,  '  must  collapse '  inevitably 
and  irretrievably  .  .  .  for  the  Graf- Wellhausen 
theory  is  contradicted  in  various  particulars  by 
evidence  of  the  most  direct  kind,  which  .  .  .  defies 
1  "Supernatural  Religion,"  pp.  23,  24. 


64  THE  PENTATEUCH 

contradiction."  ^  Wilhelm  MoUer,  in  his  Mono- 
graph on  the  Graf-Wellhausen  hypothesis  (1903), 
says: 

"  I  myself  was  immovably  convinced  of  the  irre- 
futable correctness  of  the  Graf-Wellhausen  hypoth- 
esis, so  long  as  I  allowed  it  alone  to  have  an  effect 
upon  me.  But  after  my  attention  was  once  directed 
to  its  weaknesses  (first  by  Kohler  in  Erlangen), 
after  I  had  studied  with  some  thoroughness  the 
scientific  literature  on  the  other  side,  this  hypothesis 
seemed  to  me  more  and  more  monstrous." 

Next,  I  give  the  opinion  of  Rev.  James  Robertson, 
D.D.,  Professor  of  Oriental  Languages  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Glasgow,  one  of  the  ablest,  most  open- 
minded  and  candid  writers  on  critical  subjects. 
He  says: 

"The  modern  critical  theory  .  .  .  raises  difficul- 
ties of  a  much  more  serious  kind  in  the  way  of  its 
own  acceptance."  "A  history  is  no  doubt  con- 
structed, but  the  supporting  beams  of  it  are  sub- 
jective prepossessions,  and  the  materials  are  only 
got  by  discrediting  the  sources  from  which  they  are 
drawn."  "The  self-styled  'higher'  criticism  is, 
indeed,  not  high  enough,  or  we  should  perhaps 
more  appropriately  say,  not  deep  enough,  for  the 
problem  before  it."  "  The  heart  of  the  religion  is 
hardly  looked  at,  or  rudely  torn  out  of  it."  The 
1  "The  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition,"  p.  27. 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  65 

modem  theory  "postulates  miracles  of  a  literary 
and  psychological  kind,  which  contradict  sound 
reason  and  experience  as  much  as  any  of  the 
physical  miracles  of  the  Old  Testament  transcend 
them."  ^  Dr.  Klostermann,  of  Kiel,  in  his  work, 
"Der  Pentateuch,"  makes  fun  of  the  scientific 
analysis  set  forth  in  the  Rainbow  Bible.  He  de- 
scribes the  method  of  the  critics  as  "hair-splitting 
and  atom-dividing."  Commenting  on  his  work, 
the  Expository  Times  said,  "By  a  skilful  use  of 
the  lower,  or  textual,  criticism.  Prof.  Klostermann 
is  believed  to  have  given  the  Higher  Criticism  the 
greatest  shake  it  has  yet  received." 

Yet  another  important  fact  to  be  borne  in  mind, 
preliminary  to  the  study  of  this  modern  view  of  the 
structure  and  character  of  the  Biblical  writings,  is 
the  pronounced  disagreement  among  the  critics 
themselves  upon  matters  of  capital  importance. 

It  is  claimed,  indeed,  that  "the  scholarly  world 
has  definitely  adopted"  the  Graf-Wellhausen  hy- 
pothesis. Dr.  Driver  denies  that  the  critics  are 
divided  among  themselves,  and  affirms  that  on  all 
important  points  they  are  agreed.  Now  in  rebuttal 
of  this  statement,  I  cite  the  judgment  of  a  scholar 
who  certainly  cannot  be  accused  of  being  biased  in 
favor  of  traditional  views,  and  whose  ability  is 
unquestionable.  I  refer  to  Dr.  A.  B.  Bruce,  who, 
1  "The  Early  Religion  of  Israel,"  pp.  465^77. 


66  THE  PENTATEUCH 

writing  in  1899,  when  the  claim  for  unanimity  was 
just  as  positively  made  by  Wellhausen's  disciples  as 
now,  says:  "Once  more  the  apologist  may  plead 
the  unsettled  state  of  critical  opinion.  It  will  be 
time  enough  for  the  apologist  to  dogmatize  when 
criticism  has  arrived  at  the  stage  of  finality.  It  is 
far  enough  from  having  reached  that  stage  yet. 
Not  to  mention  endless  diversity  of  view  on  special 
points,  there  are  broad  contrasts  between  different 
schools  even  with  reference  to  the  leading  critical 
problems."  ^ 

There  is,  indeed,  an  agreement  among  them  that 
there  are  four  principal  sources  whence  the  so-called 
Hexateuch  is  derived  —  and  upon  that  point  I  do 
not  undertake  to  challenge  their  conclusion  —  but  as 
to  the  authorship,  date,  contents,  and  limits  of  these 
four  documents,  and  as  to  their  real  character, 
there  is  fundamental  disagreement.  In  other  words, 
the  agreement  appears  to  be  upon  matters  of  sec- 
ondary importance,  while  on  the  primary  and  pal- 
mary question  of  the  reliability  and  the  historical 
character,  to  say  nothing  of  the  inspiration,  of 
the  documents,  the  disagreement  seems  hopeless. 
The  "results"  are  curiously  lacking  in  harmony. 
Thus,  as  to  the  Mosaic  origin  of  the  Decalogue  — 
Kuenen  affirms  it,  Wellhausen  denies  it.  Ask 
Wellhausen  if  the  Exodus  was  an  historical  event, 
1  "Apologetics,"  p.  171. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  67 

he  answers  in  the  affirmative.  Ask  Stade,  and  he 
will  say,  "  Impossible !  The  Israelites  never  were 
in  Egypt."  As  to  the  documents,  or  "sources," 
which  the  critics  discover  in  the  Pentateuch  —  one 
critic  will  tell  you  D  is  earlier  than  P,  another 
that  P  is  earlier  than  D.  As  to  the  order  of 
the  four  chief  "sources,"  J,  E,  D,  and  P,  almost 
every  possible  order  has  been  maintained  by 
reputable  critics  within  a  comparatively  short 
period. 

Even  as  to  the  prophets  —  whether  they  are  pre- 
exilic  or  no  —  there  is  no  consensus.  Some  of  the 
critics  maintain  that  the  whole  Biblical  literature  is 
later  than  the  Exile. 

But  what  have  the  critics  of  the  Wellhausen  school 
to  say  of  the  character  of  the  Biblical  books  ?  Are 
they  historical?  Have  they  any  divine  authority 
behind  them?  Do  they  record  any  divine  revela- 
tion, strictly  so  called?  To  all  these  questions  we 
get  diverse,  often  contradictory,  answers.  Speaking 
generally,  the  historicity  of  the  Pentateuch  is  rejected 
by  the  Graf -Wellhausen  school,  —  but  there  is  no 
agreement  about  it.  Dr.  Briggs  accepts  it.  George 
Adam  Smith  finds  an  "  historical  substratum  "  in  it. 
Dr.  Driver  appears  to  occupy  a  middle  ground, 
advancing  (in  his  "Genesis")  some  probable  argu- 
ments for  considering  the  patriarchs  historical  char- 
acters, though  he  finds  no  "history"  in  the  first 


68  THE  PENTATEUCH 

eleven  chapters  of  Genesis.  Dr.  J.  P.  Peters  holds 
that  the  patriarchs  are  not  historical  characters  — 
Moses  is  the  first  man  of  flesh  and  blood  in  the 
narrative;  but  Dr.  Cheyne  thinks  scholars  will  ere 
long  see  that  Moses,  too,  is  a  fictitious  character. 
As  to  Revelation,  Driver  and  George  Adam  Smith 
find  some  record  of  it  in  the  Pentateuch,  at  least  in 
a  certain  sense.  Not  so  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen. 
Wellhausen  holds  that  the  Israelitish  religion,  so  far 
from  having  its  origin  in  a  divine  revelation,  as  the 
Bible  asserts,  worked  itself  up  by  degrees  out  of 
heathenism;  and  Kuenen  aflSrms  that  the  Jewish 
and  Christian  religions  are  no  more  entitled  to  be 
considered  of  supernatural  origin  than  Buddhism  or 
Islamism.  If  we  inquire  whether  the  critics  of  this 
school  do  not  agree,  at  least  about  the  four  principal 
sources,  say  of  the  Pentateuch,  we  find  the  master 
of  the  school  afiirming  that  P,  the  Priestly  Code, 
was  a  post-exilic  fabrication  —  made,  so  to  speak, 
out  of  the  whole  cloth  by  the  priestly  school,  while 
Dr.  Briggs  holds  that  though  it  did  indeed  assume 
its  present  shape  in  the  age  subsequent  to  Ezekiel, 
yet  it  rests  ultimately  upon  an  ancient  traditional 
basis.  He  would  say  it  was  compiled  at  that  time, 
not  composed,  or  "produced,"  as  Wellhausen  says. 
In  face  of  facts  such  as  these,  the  argument  from 
unanimity  for  the  "assured  results"  of  criticism 
does  not  impress  one  as  very  convincing. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  69 

These  considerations  may  emancipate  the  inquirer 
from  the  bondage  which  the  mind  suffers  in  presum- 
ing to  examine  the  soundness  of  a  body  of  conclusions 
which  are  declared  to  be  supported  by  the  unani- 
mous verdict  of  modem  scholarship.  Freed  from 
the  shackles  of  this  dreaded  critical  authority,  we 
may  dispassionately  and  without  fear  approach  the 
subject. 

In  the  discussion  of  the  questions  involved,  I  shall 
make  my  appeal  to  reason  against  authority,  and 
shall  put  in  a  plea  against  surrendering  your  judg- 
ment to  the  authority  of  the  great  scholars  and 
linguists.  My  counsel  shall  be,  Beware  of  accepting 
such  vital  conclusions  on  authority  instead  of  on 
evidence;  exercise  the  right  of  private  judgment; 
examine  the  evidence  against,  as  well  as  for,  this 
theory;  "Prove  all  things,  hold  fast  that  which  is 
good,"  and  remember  that  the  burden  of  proof  lies 
upon  those  who  ask  us  to  revolutionize  the  beliefs 
held  by  the  Christian  Church  for  nearly  nineteen 
hundred  years,  and  by  the  Jewish  church  for  a 
much  longer  period. 

The  advocates  of  the  new  opinions  inveigh  in 
season  and  out  of  season  against  the  influence  of 
authority  as  represented  by  tradition,  and  then,  too 
often,  seek  to  impose  upon  us  the  yoke  of  authority 
in  another  and  less  honorable  form.  They  say  in 
effect,  "The  question  is  settled;  the  great  scholars 


70  THE  PENTATEUCH 

have  decided  it:  Schola  locuta  est,  causa  finita  est. 
The  debate  is  closed;  there  is  but  one  alternative  — 
bow  down  to  the  decision  of  the  hierarchy  of  the 
critics,  or  take  your  place  among  the  despised 
traditionalists,  who  are  the  slaves  of  theological 
prejudice." 

The  warning  of  the  great  Lightfoot  is  sufficient 
reply  to  this  magisterial  demand: 

"The  idols  of  our  cave  never  present  themselves 
in  a  more  alluring  form  than  when  they  appear  as 
'the  spirit  of  the  age.'  It  is  comparatively  easy  to 
resist  the  fallacies  of  past  times,  but  it  is  most 
difficult  to  escape  the  infection  of  the  atmosphere  in 
which  we  live."  '■ 

»  "Essays  on  Supernatural  Religion,"  p.  23. 


LECTURE  II 


"The  modern  theory  leaves  the  earlier  formative  and  funda- 
.         mental  periods  of  the  history  of  Israel  almost  completely  without 
a  literature,  in  order  that  it  may  concentrate  all  the  productive 
I        energies  of  the  nation  in  the  age  of  Ezra." 

Prof.  G.  T.  Ladd. 
V  "I  may  be  pardoned  for  expressing  my  belief  that  this  kind  of 

>'  investigation  is  often  pursued  with  an  exaggerated  confidence. 
Plausible  conjecture  is  too  easily  mistaken  for  positive  proof. 
Undue  significance  is  attached  to  what  may  be  mere  casual 
coincidences,  and  a  minuteness  of  accuracy  is  professed  in  dis- 
criminating between  different  elements  in  a  narrative  which 
cannot  be  attained  by  mere  internal  evidence.  In  all  writings, 
but  especially  in  the  writings  of  an  age  when  criticism  was  xm- 
known,  there  will  be  repetitions,  contradictions,  inconsistencies, 
diversities  of  style,  which  do  not  necessarily  indicate  different 
authorship  or  dates."  W.  E.  H.  Leckt. 

"Moses  has  become  a  shadowy  personage  whose  very  existence 
has  been  denied;  the  narratives  of  Genesis  have  been  turned  into 
fictions;  the  story  of  the  Exodus  has  been  refuted;  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  Pentateuch  brought  down  to  the  age  of  the  Exile." 

Prof.  Satce. 

Prof.  Eduard  Konig  thus  enumerates  some  of  the  various 
forms  of  the  personification -theory  in  regard  to  Abraham :  he  is 
the  personification  of  a  Tribe;  he  is  the  personification  of  ideas; 
he  is  one  of  the  native  Canaanite  forms  borrowed  by  Israel;  he 
is  a  discrowned  deity  (einen  depotenzierten  Gott) .  See  Neueste 
Prinzipien  der  altestamentlichen  Kritik,  1902,  p.  65. 


72 


LECTURE  II 

In  resuming  the  discussion  of  the  Higher 
Criticism,  let  me  remind  you  of  the  limitation 
of  my  subject.  My  criticism  shall  be  confined  to 
the  conclusions,  literary  and  historical,  of  Wellhausen 
and  those  who,  since  the  publication  of  his  great 
work  in  1878,  have  followed  closely  in  his  footsteps. 
I  would  not  be  seriously  concerned  to  challenge  the 
view  that  the  compilers  of  the  Priestly  Code  merely 
codified  ancient  documents  which  were  substantially 
Mosaic,  or  of  the  Mosaic  age,  —  documents,  observe, 
not  oral  traditions,  —  but  it  is  the  theory  of  the 
master,  not  of  the  pupil,  that  counts  and  is  the  chief 
matter  to  be  reckoned  with.  We  observe  that  the 
accomplished  scholars  who  have  contested  the 
alleged  results  of  the  Higher  Criticism  address 
themselves  to  the  theories  and  arguments  of  the 
Graf- Wellhausen  school.  We  observe,  also,  that  in 
the  critical  world  generally  it  is  the  Wellhausen 
theory  that  bulks  largest.  Even  such  a  scholar  as 
Dillmann  is  not,  we  are  told,  listened  to  in  Germany 
when  he  argues  that  the  Priestly  Code  is  a  pre-exilic 

73 


74  THE  PENTATEUCH 

document,  and  in  his  conclusion  on  this  point  "he 
stands  almost  alone."  Dr.  Hommel,  writing  about 
ten  years  ago,  said,  "The  new  views  are  pressed 
home  so  triumphantly  that  any  attempt  to  return 
to  the  old  line  seems  only  worthy  of  a  'pitying 
smile.'"* 

I  beg  you  also  to  understand  that  I  am  not  con- 
tending against  the  documentary  hypothesis.  There 
is  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  the  theory  of  the 
composite  character  of  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch. 
Neither  do  I  hold  a  brief  for  the  traditional  view  of 
the  Mosaic  authorship.  It  is,  I  conceive,  a  legiti- 
mate subject  of  inquiry  how  far  these  books,  in  the 
form  that  we  have  them  now,  proceeded  from  the 
hand  of  Moses,  provided  they  are  accepted  as 
authentic  accounts  of  the  transactions  they  record. 
Nor  yet  am  I  arguing  the  question  of  how  far  alle- 
gory may  be  made  use  of  as  a  legitimate  vehicle  of 
divine  revelation.  In  my  judgment  it  is  an  entire 
mistake  to  suppose  that  the  value  of  the  narrative 
of  the  Fall,  in  the  book  of  Genesis,  is  dependent 
upon  its  being  accepted  as  literal  history.  If  we 
suppose  it  to  be  an  allegory  and  not  histor}^,  the 
teaching  it  embodies  is  just  as  important,  is,  in  fact, 
just  the  same.  This  view  was  held  by  many  of  the 
early  Christian  fathers.  Gregory,  of  Nyssa,  de- 
scribes the  account  of  Paradise  and  the  Fall  as 
'  That  could  not  be  said  so  positively  to-day. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  75 

"ideas  in  the  form  of  a  story."  On  this  occasion 
I  make  no  affirmation  in  regard  to  these  several 
points.  I  wish  only  to  make  it  clear  that  in  chal- 
lenging the  Wellhausen  hypothesis,  of  the  books 
and  of  the  history,  these  questions  are  not  involved 
one  way  or  the  other. 

Let  me  proceed  now,  without  further  preface,  to 
state  in  outline  the  analysis  of  the  first  six  books  of 
the  Bible  which  the  Graf- Wellhausen  school  claim 
to  have  established.  Taking  as  our  guides  some 
eminent  recent  representatives  of  that  school,  we 
are  informed  that  the  oldest  portions  of  this  so-called 
Hexateuch  may  be  dated  about  930  b.c,  at  the  close 
of  Solomon's  reign,  viz..  Genesis  xlix.  1-27,  Exodus 
xxi.-xxiii.,  Numbers  xxi.  14,  Joshua  x.  13,  and 
Numbers  xxiii.-xxiv.  These  fragments  were  subse- 
quently incorporated  in  the  larger  work  which  had 
its  origin  a  century  later.  Leaving  these  fragmen- 
tary pieces  on  one  side,  the  critics  discover  four 
chief  sources,  or  documents,  at  the  basis  of  the 
books  (J,  E,  D,  P),  which  were  interwoven  with 
each  other  by  a  series  of  editors,  and  into  which 
were  incorporated  quite  a  number  of  smaller  pieces. 

The  author  of  J,  the  Jahvist,  lived,  they  say,  in 
Judah  about  850  B.C.  The  Jehovistic  document, 
however,  is  really  the  work  of  three  narrators, 
3\  P,  P:  Ji  writing  about  850  B.C.;  P  about  700 
B.C.;  and  P  about  650  B.C. 


76  THE  PENTATEUCH 

One  hundred  years  later,  about  750  B.C.,  a  second 
story-teller  took  the  field,  this  time  in  Israel,  who 
receives  from  the  critics  the  designation  E,  the 
Elohist.  His  work  was  revised  a  hundred  years 
later  by  an  Ephraimite  (E^).  Next  we  are  told 
these  two  story-books  were  united  into  one  history 
book  (JE),  and  woven  together  as  they  now  stand, 
about  the  year  650  b.c. 

Next  we  come  to  the  writer  called  D,  the  author 
of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy.  This  writer  com- 
posed that  book,  according  to  Wellhausen,  about 
the  year  621  b.c.  Perhaps  we  ought  to  say,  parts 
of  the  book,  for  other  critics  introduce  at  least 
two  revisers,  Dh  and  Dp,  who  wrote  at  a  later 
period;  and  during  the  Babylonian  Exile  amalga- 
mated their  several  documents,  producing  Deuter- 
onomy substantially  as  we  have  it  to-day.  Some 
of  the  critics  place  its  composition  in  the  reign  of 
Josiah;  others  in  that  of  Manasseh;  others  in  that 
of  Hezekiah,  and  others  in  that  of  Uzziah.  The 
writer  did  his  work  so  cleverly  that  he  succeeded  in 
deceiving  king  and  people  into  the  belief  that 
Deuteronomy  was  the  work  of  Moses  many  centuries 
before. 

The  next  step  was  the  combination  of  the  history 
book  JE  with  Deuteronomy,  during  the  Babylonian 
Exile  (JED),  about  540  b.c. 

The  fourth  document  in  the  Hexateuch  the  critics 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  77 

call  P;  that  is,  the  Priestly  writing.  This  corre- 
sponds roughly  with  the  sacrificial  system  contained 
in  the  books  of  Exodus,  Leviticus,  and  Numbers, 
besides  many  passages  in  the  book  of  Genesis. 
Several  writers  were  successively  concerned  in  it, 
PS  P2,  P3,  PS  ps,  etc.,  to  Pi«.  Begun  during  the 
Exile,  it  was  completed  and  brought  to  Jerusalem 
about  444  B.C.  Ezra  told  the  people  it  was  "the 
book  of  the  Law  of  Moses,  which  the  Lord  had 
commanded  to  Israel,"  though,  in  fact,  it  was  no 
such  thing,  but  a  pious  fraud  cleverly  composed  by 
some  of  the  priests  in  exile  in  Babylon. 

Not  till  about  400  b.c.  was  this  Priest's  Code, 
after  receiving  many  additions  (Genesis  i.-ii.  4,^  v., 
vi.-ix.,  x.),  combined  with  the  previously  existing 
history  book  (JED),  making  at  length  the  Hexateuch 
(JEDP).^ 

I  may  add  that  Prof.  Cornill  discovers  twenty-six 
writers,  or  redactors,  who  had  a  hand  in  the  com- 
position of  the  Hexateuch,  and  a  later  writer,  author 
of  the  Oxford  Hexateuch,  assures  us  that  there  were 
at  least  twenty-eight. 

Now,  I  ask,  what  degree  of  probability  can  attach 
to  a  theory  so  elaborately  artificial  as  is  embodied 
in  the  above  analysis  ?  \^^lat  likelihood  is  there 
that  modern  scholars,  two  or  three  thousand  years 

iSee  "Old  Testament  Critics,"  Thos.  Whitelaw,  D.D., 
pp.  4-14. 


78  THE  PENTATEUCH  ' 

after  these  books  were  composed,  can  successfully 
perform  such  a  feat  of  literary  dissection  as  is  here 
involved  ?  If  these  scholars  are  right,  we  may  truly 
say  that  the  so-called  books  of  Moses  were  "  framed 
according  to  a  literary  method  altogether  unparal- 
leled in  order  to  manufacture  a  history  which  never 
was."  Some  forty  years  ago,  that  great  scholar. 
Dean  Milman,  in  writing  a  preface  to  a  new  edition 
of  his  "  History  of  the  Jews,"  gave  the  follo\\dng 
weighty  judgment  in  his  critique  upon  Ewald's 
"  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel " : 

"That  the  Hebrew  records,  especially  the  books 
of  Moses,  may  have  been  compiled  from  various 
documents,  is  assuredly  a  legitimate  subject  of 
inquiry.  But  that  any  critical  microscope,  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  can  be  so  exquisite  and  so 
powerful  as  to  dissect  the  whole  with  perfect  nicety, 
to  decompose  it,  and  assign  each  separate  para- 
graph to  its  special  origin  in  three,  four,  or  five,  or 
more  independent  documents,  each  of  which  has 
contributed  its  part,  —  this  seems  to  me  a  task 
which  no  mastery  of  the  Hebrew  language,  no 
discernment,  however  fine  or  discriminating,  can 
achieve." 

You  will  remember  that  Paley  lays  the  foundation 
for  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion  upon  the 
antecedent  probability  of  revelation.  I  think  we 
may  lay  a  solid  basis  for  calling  in  question  the 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  79 

truth  of  this  hypothesis  upon  the  enormous  ante- 
cedent improbabiUty  which  it  involves.  For  my 
own  part,  I  avow  that  I  would  as  soon  believe  that 
the  Apollo  Belvedere,  and  the  Venus  de  Milo,  were 
each  the  work  of  twenty  or  thirty  sculptors  in 
different  epochs  of  ancient  history,  and  that  our 
modem  expert  artists  could  mark  off  the  parts  of 
those  masterpieces  which  were  wrought  by  each,  as 
I  will  believe  that  the  exquisite  story  of  Joseph  and 
his  brethren  (to  take  but  a  single  example)  —  a 
veritable  masterpiece  of  literary  art  —  was  the  work 
of  a  score  or  more  of  authors  and  "redactors,"  and 
that  our  clever  professors  of  critical  anatomy  can 
dissect  it,  verse  by  verse,  and  clause  by  clause,  and 
distribute  the  fragments  severally  to  their  various 
writers  and  compilers.  Let  me  give  you  a  concrete 
example  of  this  their  literary  anatomy  of  that 
beautiful  story.  Take,  at  random,  Gen.  xlv.  1. 
We  read: 

"Then  Joseph  could  not  refrain  himself  before  all  them  that 
stood  by  him;  and  he  cried,  Cause  every  man  to  go  out  from  me. 
And  there  stood  no  man  with  him,  while  Joseph  made  himself 
known  unto  his  brethren.  And  he  wept  aloud:  and  the  Egyptians 
and  the  house  of  Pharaoh  heard." 

Surely  this  narrative  is  like  a  seamless  garment 
woven  from  the  top  tliroughout!  But  the  critics 
have  no  compunction  in  rending  it  asunder.  They 
consider  it  a  piece  of  patchwork.     The  first  half  of 


80  THE  PENTATEUCH 

verse  1  came,  they  say,  from  the  source  J,  the 
second  half  of  the  same  verse  from  the  source  E. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  first  half  of  verse  2  is  from 
the  source  E,  the  second  half  from  the  source 
J.  The  following  verses  are  treated  in  the  same 
way,  but  verse  5  is  rent  into  four  parts,  of  which 
the  first  and  third  were  assigned  to  J,  and  the 
second  and  fourth  to  E.  Sometimes  you  will  find 
the  beginning  of  a  verse  assigned  to  one  writer, 
the  middle  to  another,  the  end  to  a  third!  Thus 
right  through  this  exquisite  story,  the  text  is  "  infini- 
tesimally  split  up  by  merely  formal  criteria." 

Surely  the  canons  of  art,  if  not  of  common  sense, 
may  have  something  to  say  in  such  a  case.  There 
is  such  a  thing  as  literary  probability  and  improb- 
ability, and  I  make  bold  to  affirm  that  the  supposi- 
tion that  any  critical  scalpel  is  delicate  enough,  and 
any  critical  hand  steady  enough,  and  any  critical 
brain  omniscient  enough  to  perform  such  a  feat  of 
dissection  twenty-five  hundred  or  three  thousand 
years  after  the  date  of  the  work,  is  a  literary  improb- 
ability raised  to  the  nth  power !  One  can  only  con- 
clude that  our  critics  must  have  been  intoxicated 
by  philology  to  that  degree  that  their  judgment  has 
ceased  to  be  reliable.  Festus's  exclamation,  "  Much 
learning  doth  make  thee  mad,"  would  be  entirely 
appropriate  in  the  case  of  these  our  Higher  Critics, 
and  it  could  not  be  successfully  gainsaid. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  81 

But  to  proceed.  In  order  to  grasp  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  the  Wellhausen  hypothesis  we  must 
set  before  our  minds  clearly  the  propositions  which 
it  involves.     Here  are  some  of  them: 

(1)  The  Law  (that  is,  the  books  of  the  Law 
including  the  greater  part  of  the  legislation)  is  later 
than  the  prophets.^  (2)  The  book  of  Deuteronomy 
is  an  invention  —  a  fiction  —  a  fia  fraus  —  dating 
from  the  year  621  B.C.  (3)  The  Priestly  Code,  in- 
volving large  parts  of  Genesis,  Exodus,  Leviticus,  and 
Numbers,  is  of  post-exilic  origin;  it  was  composed  in 
the  time  of  Ezra  and  was  a  work  of  the  imagination 
of  the  priestly  school.  (4)  The  Mosaic  theocracy  was 
never  actual  until  after  the  Exile.  (5)  "  It  reduces  a 
large  portion  of  Israelitish  history,  up  to  a  short  time 
prior  to  the  Exile,  to  a  mass  of  legends  and  uncer- 
tain traditions."  ^  (6)  This  hypothesis  involves  the 
evolutionary  view  of  religion  as  contradistinguished 
from  the  view  presented  throughout  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures, namely,  that  religion  has  its  origin  in  revela- 
tion. (7)  The  religion  of  Israel,  in  particular,  had 
its  origin,  not  in  a  divine  revelation,  but  in  a  self- 
evolution,  by  slow  stages,  out  of  heathenism. 

1 "  It  is  no  longer  possible  to  regard  the  Law  as  a  whole  as 
prior  to  the  Prophets;  on  the  contrary,  and  speaking  broadly, 
the  prophetic  stage  was  considerably  anterior  to  the  legalistic, 
this  latter  not  attaining  its  full  development  until  after  the  Exile." 
—  Contentio  Veritatis,  p.  172. 

2  Dr.  Wright. 


82  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Now,  if  the  above  view  of  the  origin  and  structure 
of  the  early  books  of  the  Bible  be  accepted,  it 
follows  that  the  Jews  have  been  utterly  wrong  in 
their  view  of  their  own  history  from  its  earliest 
beginnings  down  to  the  time  of  Ezra.  It  follows 
further  that  both  the  authority  of  the  Pentateuch 
and  the  divine  origin  of  Judaism  must  be  abandoned. 
Wellhausen  says,  "  The  substance  of  the  Pentateuch 
is  not  historical,  but  legendary."  ^  For  it  is  clear 
that  this  analysis  of  the  Pentateuch  goes  much 
deeper  than  mere  questions  of  the  date  and  author- 
ship of  the  books.  It  cuts  up  by  the  roots  the  truth 
of  the  history  narrated.  Moses  not  only  did  not 
write  the  Pentateuch  (which,  indeed,  we  do  not 
assert),  but  he  was  not  the  author  of  the  Laws;  he 
did  not  build  the  tabernacle  or  promulgate  the 
sacrificial  system  in  the  wilderness.  All  that  was  a 
post-exilic  invention  a  thousand  years  after  the 
event.  If  there  was  any  revelation  through  ISIoses, 
we  cannot  be  sure  what  it  was.  The  patriarchal 
stories  must  also  be  labeled  unhistorical.  George 
Adam  Smith  thinks  they  may  have  about  the  heart 
of  them  "historical  elements."  Dr.  J.  P.  Peters 
holds  that  the  patriarchs  were  none  of  them  indi- 
viduals who  actually  existed.  Moses  (as  already 
remarked)  was  the  first  historical  personage  in  the 
story. 

» Art.  "Pentateuch,"  Encyc.  Brit.,  p.  98. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  83 

The  critics  differ  among  themselves  on  the  ques- 
tion whether  the  Pentateuch  records  any  real  reve- 
lation. Driver  and  George  Adam  Smith  say  "  Yes," 
Kuenen  and  Wellhausen  say  "  No  " !  The  value  of 
this  admission  by  the  former  writers  will  depend, 
however,  on  their  definition  of  revelation.  George 
Adam  Smith  writes,  "  Revelation  is  not  the  promul- 
gation of  a  law,  nor  the  prediction  of  future  events, 
nor  the  imparting  to  man  of  truths  which  he  could 
not  find  out  for  himself."  ^  To  say,  then,  that  there 
is  a  revelation  from  God  in  the  Pentateuch  is  not 
to  admit  that  God  therein  promulgated  a  law,  or 
gave  any  power  to  predict  the  future,  or  revealed  to 
Moses,  or  others,  any  truths  which  they  could  not 
find  out  for  themselves. 

But  excluding  these  ideas  of  revelation,  what 
remains  but  natural  development  of  religion  under 
Providential  guidance?  It  is,  in  fact,  difficult  to 
see  how  the  idea  of  a  divine  revelation,  or  of  the 
inspiration  of  Scripture,  in  any  real  sense,  can 
survive,  if  the  preceding  account  of  the  structure 
of  these  books  is  once  accepted.  In  that  case,  not 
only  are  the  stories  of  the  Fall  and  of  the  Deluge 
destitute  of  historical  foundation,  and  the  patriarchs 
fictitious  characters,  but  God  never  spoke  to  Moses, 
or  ordained  the  Mosaic  statutes.  Practically  the 
whole  book  of  Deuteronomy  is  an  invention  —  a 
1  "Histl.  Geography  of  Holy  Land,  p.  33. 


84  THE  PENTATEUCH 

fiction — composed  seven  hundred  or  eight  hundred 
years  after  the  events  it  undertakes  to  chronicle. 
Wellhausen  says  of  these  writers  of  Scripture,  that 
"  They  completely  altered  the  ancient  history,"  they 
"  idealized  the  past  to  their  heart's  content,"  and  the 
result  was  "an  artificial  and  ideal  repristination." 
Their  books  are  mostly  unhistorical.  They  were 
spun  out  of  the  inner  consciousness  of  the  school  of 
Ezekiel  in  the  time  of  Ezra.  But  this  is  not  all. 
It  appears  to  be  an  essential  element  of  Wellhausen's 
system  that  the  early  Israelites  were  uncivilized 
nomads;  that  they  not  only  practised  the  worship 
of  ancestors,  but  were  worshipers  of  trees,  stones, 
springs,  etc.  Fetichism  and  Totemism  prevailed 
among  them.  This  is  another  of  the  "results"  we 
must  be  prepared  to  accept  if  the  Graf- Wellhausen 
school  offers  the  true  explanation  of  the  critical 
problems  of  the  Biblical  literature. 

Now,  that  the  revelation  in  the  Old  Testament  is 
progressive  we  may  certainly  recognize,^  but  such 

1 "  I  am  quite  prepared  to  say,  with  an  able  English  writer,  We 
do  not,  as  is  sometimes  supposed,  argue  that  it  is  essentially 
dangerous  and  heretical  to  hold  that  the  ancient  legal  formularies 
of  Israel  may  have  been  re-edited  and  rearranged  at  some  period 
subsequent  to  the  Exile.  All  we  say  is,  there  is  sufficient  evidence 
to  support  the  belief  that  they  were  not  materially  altered  or 
added  to  at  that  period.  ...  If  the  whole  of  the  Pentateuch 
had  been  recast,  and  modernized,  and  rearranged  after  the  Exile, 
it  would  be  a  matter  of  no  practical  moment  to  us,  just  as  the 
modernization  of  the  spelling  in  the  Authorized  version,  or  in 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  85 

a  view  as  this  strikes  a  very  serious  blow  at  the 
reaHty  of  the  revelation  itself.  "  The  opponents  of 
scientific  criticism,"  says  a  prominent  member  of  the 
school,  "  are  quite  right  when  they  speak  of  its 
destructive  tendency."  If  God  did  not  speak  to 
Abraham  or  to  Moses  —  if  there  was  no  Sinaitic 
covenant  —  no  revelation  of  the  Decalogue  —  no 
tabernacle  —  no  sacrificial  system  in  the  wilderness 
—  although  the  Bible  afiirms  all  these  things ;  if 
"  the  Israelitish  rehgion  at  first  worked  itself  up  out 
of  heathenism  by  degrees,"  as  Wellhausen  says, 
instead  of  having  its  origin  in  a  divine  revelation, 
as  the  Bible  asserts;  if,  as  Kuenen  affirms,  the 
Jewish  and  the  Christian  religions  are  no  more 
entitled  to  be  considered  of  supernatural  origin  than 
Buddhism  or  Islamism;  if  the  Bible  in  its  earlier 
parts  is  but  a  congeries  of  myths  and  legends  and 
folk-lore,  and  if  its  "histories"  are,  in  fact,  written 
by  men  who  lived  from  five  hundred  to  a  thousand 
years  after  the  times  of  which  they  write,  and  are 
the  work  of  writers  who,  ha^^ng  no  definite  infor- 
mation, supplied  the  lack  of  it  "  by  inventing  occur- 

the  Prayer  Book,  is  a  matter  of  no  practical  moment.  It  is  only 
a  question  of  purely  academic  interest  so  long  as  the  historic 
character  of  its  contents  is  admitted.  .  .  .  Two  perfectly  distinct 
questions  have  been  mixed  up  by  many  .  .  .  the  question  of 
editorship,  author,  and  arrangement,  and  that  of  substantial 
historical  accuracy."  —  Rev.  J.  J.  Lias,  Lex  Mosaica,  pp.  269, 
270. 


86  THE  PENTATEUCH 

fences  and  experiences  that  never  took  place";  by 
setting  down  speeches  and  orations  that  were  never 
spoken,  in  fact  or  in  substance,  as  if  they  had 
been;  and  by  recording  laws  "that  were  not  pro- 
mulgated by  the  legislators  to  whom  they  were 
assigned,"  —  then  the  reality  of  the  revelation  which 
the  Old  Testament  has  been  supposed  to  record, 
can  hardly  be  maintained. 

The  conclusion,  indeed,  can  scarcely  be  resisted, 
that  if  these  critical  theories  shall  finally  prevail, 
both  the  historical  truth  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
the  supernatural  character  of  the  religion  it  con- 
tains, must  be  abandoned. 

Such  is  the  conclusion  of  that  great  scholar  and 
historian.  Bishop  Stubbs,  who  writes :  "  Here  the 
crisis  becomes  most  urgent,  the  issues  most  imminent, 
and  fatally  important.  I  cannot  imagine  greater 
issues  than  those  which  these  considerations  are 
likely  to  force  upon  us.  If  the  result  of  the  present 
speculations  should  be  the  displacement  or  rejection 
of  any  considerable  part  of  the  Jewish  Law  and 
Record,  it  would  involve  the  rewriting  of  the  whole 
of  Catholic,  of  Christian,  theology;  and,  what  is 
more  critical  still,  such  an  explanation  of  the  way 
in  which  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  are  used  in 
the  New  as  would  call  in  question  the  knowledge 
and  honesty  of  the  writers  whom  we  believe  to 
be   inspired,   and   in   some   matters   endanger   the 


AND  THE  fflGHER  CRITICISM  87 

authority  of  the  words  reported  to  be  spoken  by 
our  Lord."  ("Biblical  Criticism,"  p.  11,S.  P.  C.  K., 
London,  1905.) 

We  cannot,  as  Bishop  Stubbs  suggests,  in  measur- 
ing the  significance  of  these  alleged  "  results,"  avoid 
considering  their  relation  to  the  divine  authority 
and  personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  We  ask  how  are 
we  to  understand  his  solemn  statement,  "Abraham 
rejoiced  to  see  my  day,  and  he  saw  it  and  was  glad," 
if,  as  these  critics  tell  us,  Abraham  never  existed? 
And  if  in  reply  we  are  referred  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Kenosis,  and  asked  to  believe  that  in  his  humiliation 
he  was  quite  ignorant  of  the  real  facts  of  early 
Jewish  history,  we  wonder  where  this  Kenosis  is  to 
stop  ?  Can  we  rely  on  his  teaching  at  all  ^  In 
what  sense  was  he  the  "  Truth "  }  And  why  was 
it  that  even  after  his  resurrection,  when  liis  humilia- 
tion was  past,  and  the  days  of  his  Kenosis  should 
have  been  past  also,  did  he  continue  to  appeal  to 
the  authority  of  the  Law  and  the  Prophets  and  the 
Psalms  ?  It  is  often  urged  that  our  Lord  could  no 
more  have  considered  the  problem  of  the  Higher 
Criticism  than  of  modern  astronomy  or  geology, 
and  hence  that  we  can  infer  nothing  in  regard  to 
the  antiquity  or  authorship,  or  even  the  historicity, 
of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  from  his  manner 
of  speaking  of  them.  But  surely  the  matter  cannot 
be  thus  summarily  disposed  of.     He  was,  to  say  the 


88  THE  PENTATEUCH 

least,  the  author  and  finisher  of  our  faith.  He 
claimed  to  reveal  God  and  his  truth.  He  inter- 
preted the  ancient  religion  and  revelation.  There- 
fore, as  has  been  well  pointed  out  by  Prof.  Nosgen, 
he  must  have  studied  and  rightly  estimated  the 
previous  stages  of  the  divine  revelation;  he  must 
have  "  intuitively  penetrated  and  estimated  the 
integrity  and  truth  of  the  Scriptures  which  attest 
that  revelation  " :  consequently  he  could  not  "  allow 
to  pass  as  a  divine  revelation  "  that  which  was  no 
revelation  but  the  invention  of  men;  nor  could  he 
"recognize  as  divinely  given  prophecy"  what  was 
nothing  but  the  speculation  or  imagination  of  men. 
"  His  claim  to  be  the  true  revealer  of  God  would 
break  down  if  such  mistakes  in  spiritual  and  ethical 
estimate  could  be  brought  home  to  him."  ^  The 
words  of  an  eminent  living  scholar  are  pertinent  here: 
"As  Christians  we  cannot  abandon  the  teaching 
of  Christ,  or  forget  the  endorsement  of  the  Old 
Testament  books  by  the  writers  of  the  New.  We 
therefore  refuse  to  seat  ourselves  as  pupils  at 
the  feet  of  critics  who,  to  a  large  extent,  regard  the 
Old  Testament  histories  as  mere  fictions,  and  the 
visions  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  as  only  grand 
poetical  imaginations."  ^ 

>  "The  New  Testament  and  the  Pentateuch,"  p.  32.     C.  A. 
Nosgen,  D.D.,  Professor  in  Rostock. 

2  Dr.  Chas.  H.  Wright,  Introduction,  p.  10. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  89 

And  Prof.  Nosgen  puts  the  case  none  too  strongly 
when  he  says: 

"  He  treated,  used,  and  vindicated  the  legislation 
of  the  Pentateuch  in  all  its  parts  as  proceeding 
from  God.  Hence  there  opens  up  an  impassable 
chasm  between  the  modem  critical  analysis  and 
the  manner  in  which  Jesus  esteems  and  enforces 
the  Law."  ^ 

Such,  then,  is  this  theory  of  the  structure  of  the 
earlier  books  of  the  Bible,  such  are  its  implications, 
and  such  its  revolutionary  consequences  to  the 
immemorial  beliefs  of  the  Christian  and  the  Jewish 
churches. 

But  if  the  theory  is  established  by  suflScient 
evidence,  it  must  be  accepted,  be  the  consequences 
what  they  may.  But  is  the  theory  firmly  based 
upon  sound  reasoning  ?  Is  the  evidence  convincing, 
—  conclusive  ?  I  make  bold  to  answer  that  ques- 
tion in  the  negative,  and  first  I  adduce  some  weighty 
adverse  expert  opinion.  In  the  very  face  of  the 
confident  assertions  of  many  of  the  critics  that  these 
conclusions  are  now  regarded  as  finalities  in  the 
field  of  scholarship,  the  student  of  the  Bible  finds 
himself  perplexed  by  observing  that  some  very  able 
and  scholarly  critics  hold  a  contrary  opinion.  Take, 
for  instance,  Wellhausen's  conclusion  that  Deuter- 
onomy was  written  at  the  time  of  its  discovery  in 
1  Id.  p.  77.    See  also  pp.  88,  89. 


90  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  seventh  century  B.C.,  which  he  says  is  accepted 
"  in  all  centres  where  scientific  results  may  hope  for 
recognition,"  —  and  the  corollary  thereto  as  stated  by 
Dr.  Justi,  the  orientalist,  of  Marburg,  viz.,  that  the 
book  is  "  a  wholesale  perversion  of  history,"  "  a 
clumsy  forgery  "  to  which  "  only  the  narrow-minded 
can  shut  their  eyes."  All  this,  I  say,  we  find  flatly 
contradicted  by  such  scholars  as  Dr.  Klostermann 
in  his  work  on  the  Pentateuch,  and  Dr.  Hommel  in 
"The  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition."  The  theory  is 
recognized  by  all  the  critics  as  one  of  the  pillars  of 
Wellhausen's  system.  Yet  Hommel  says  it  is  only 
a  theory:  it  has  not  been  proved.  And  Klostermann 
declares  the  Deuteronomic  narrative  "  bears  the  im- 
press of  absolute  credibility,"  and  "excludes  the 
possibility  of  any  such  deception."  Similar  is  the 
view  of  Dr.  James  Robertson. 

Or,  take  Wellhausen's  general  scheme  of  criticism. 
That  brilliant  orientalist,  Dr.  Hommel,  undertakes 
to  prove  Wellhausen  in  error  in  various  points,  and 
maintains:  (l)  That  in  its  beginnings  the  Israelitish 
religion  was  a  mixture  of  ancestral  worship  and 
fetichism  is  negatived  by  the  absence  of  any  traces 
of  the  same  in  the  language.  Philology  is  against 
it.  (2)  The  Tel  el-Amarna  tablets  (1430  b.c.)  and 
the  Egyptian  Minna^an  inscriptions  indirectly  con- 
firm the  reliability  of  the  Hebrew  tradition,  and  the 
existence  of  pre-Mosaic  records.     (3)  Wellhausen's 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  91 

view  of  ancient  Hebrew  tradition  meets  an  unanswer- 
able argument  in  the  authenticity  of  Genesis  xiv., 
which  he  says  can  no  longer  be  denied.  Its  alleged 
exilic  date  "  must  be  absolutely  abandoned."  (4)  As 
to  the  origin  and  meaning  of  the  name  Jehovah. 

(5)  As  to  the  alleged  post-exilic  date  of  the  Priestly 
Code,  Hommel  finds  proof  of  a  far  earlier  date  in 
the  absence  of  Babylonian  and  Aramaic  loan  words. 

(6)  The  personal  names  ascribed  to  patriarchal  and 
Mosaic  times,  instead  of  being  late  exilic  inventions, 
Hommel  finds  to  have  been  in  actual  use  at  those 
periods  and  could  not  have  been  invented  even  as 
late  as  the  time  of  the  Kings.  (7)  The  supposition 
that  the  Priestly  Code  was  a  post-exilic  invention, 
"having  no  existence  in  the  time  of  the  prophets," 
involves  in  Hommel's  view  "such  a  monstrous  falsi- 
fication of  tradition  between  Ezekiel  and  Ezra  as  is 
absolutely  incompatible  with  everything  we  know 
of  the  national  characteristics  of  the  Israelites  during 
their  previous  history."  (8)  In  short,  Hommel, 
writing  in  1897,  nearly  twenty  years  after  the  pro- 
mulgation of  Wellhausen's  theory,  declares  that  the 
"  Graf-Wellhausen  theory  is  contradicted  in  various 
particulars  by  evidence  of  the  most  direct  kind, 
which  defies  contradiction." 

In  view  of  all  these  utterances  of  learned  and 
accomplished  scholars,  the  consensus  of  Hebrew 
scholars,   so    confidently    claimed,    appears    hardly 


92  THE  PENTATEUCH 

justified  —  even  for  the  Graf-Wellhausen  theory  as 
modified  and  toned  down  by  Dr.  Briggs  and  Dr. 
Driver. 

Turning  now  from  the  adverse  judgments  of  par- 
ticular scholars,  let  us  come  to  the  merits  of  the  case, 
and  note  some  of  the  grounds  upon  which  this  brilliant 
and  widely  dominant  hypothesis  is  to  be  condemned. 

1.  Well,  first  the  method  by  which  it  is  arrived 
at  is  inadequate.  It  is  based  predominantly  on 
philology,  and  philology  cannot  furnish  suflBcient 
support  —  broad  enough  and  deep  enough  —  for  so 
weighty  a  superstructure.  History  and  archaeology 
must  also  be  used  as  foundation  stones.  This 
argument  was  urged,  in  temperately,  perhaps,  but 
with  great  force,  by  Dr.  Emil  Reich  in  The  Contem- 
forary  Review  for  February  and  April,  1905.  He 
reminds  us  that  Theseus  and  Romulus  "were  mur- 
dered by  a  pack  of  philologists  " ;  that  Lycurgus  was 
by  the  same  class  "  dissolved  into  a  myth  " ;  that  they 
first  robbed  Homer  of  his  character,  branding  him 
as  "an  impudent  plunderer  of  other  men's  wits," 
and  finally  did  him  to  death,  by  proving  conclusively 
that  he  never  existed  at  all!  Like  considerations 
were  urged  by  Dean  Milman  more  than  a  genera- 
tion ago  to  the  critical  theories  then  in  vogue. 
What  he  wrote  of  them  may  be  applied  equally  to 
the  Graf-Wellhausen  theory: 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  93 

"  There  seems  to  be  a  fatal  fallacy  in  the  ground- 
work of  much  of  their  argument.  Their  minute 
inferences,  and  conclusions  drawn  from  slight  prem- 
ises, seem  to  presuppose  an  antiquity  and  perfect 
accuracy  in  the  existing  text,  not  in  itself  probable, 
and  certainly  utterly  inconsistent  with  the  general 
principles  of  their  criticism.  They  are  in  this 
respect,  in  this  alone,  almost  at  one  with  the  most 
rigid  adherent  of  verbal  inspiration.  .  .  .  The  argu- 
ment from  language  appears  to  me  to  be  equally 
insecure,  and  to  be  used  with  great  caution  and 
judgment.  .  .  .  This  criticism  must  always  bear  in 
mind  the  uncertainty  of  the  received  text,  which  on 
its  own  principles  ...  it  is  bound  to  admit."  ^ 

2.  This  theory  is  condemned  also  because  its 
whole  vast  structure  rests  implicitly  upon  two  de- 
cidedly questionable  assumptions,  viz.,  that  it  is  a 
law  of  the  development  of  religion  that  ritual  tends 
to  grow  more  and  more  elaborate,  and  that  in 
examining  the  sources  of  any  sacred  literature,  we 
may  assume  that  the  older  sources  will,  of  course, 
reflect  the  earlier  stages  of  ritual  use.  Commenting 
on  this,  a  writer  in  the  new  Jewish  Encyclopaedia 
remarks : 

"The  former  is  against  the  evidence  of  primitive 

'Milman,  "History  of  the  Jews,"  Vol.  I,  Bk.  Ill,  note, 
pp.  177-181.  This  note  was  written  for  the  fourth  edition,  about 
1866.     It  should  be  read  with  care. 


94  THE  PENTATEUCH 

cultures,  and  the  latter  finds  no  support  in  the 
evidence  of  ritual  codes  like  those  of  India."  * 
Compare  the  view  of  Rawlinson,  a  high  authority 
in  historical  investigation:  "It  does  not  appear," 
says  he,  "that  very  simple  systems  of  law  and 
observance  do  belong  to  very  primitive  societies, 
but  rather  the  contrary.  Accadian  institutions  as 
revealed  to  us  by  the  earliest  cuneiform  inscriptions 
are  very  complicated,  the  regulations  of  the  ancient 
Phoenician  ritual  are  most  minute,  and  Burckhardt 
tells  us  that  the  great  Bedouin  community  of  Arabia 
has  a  most  carefully  elaborated  system  of  social 
and  legal  observances,  which  has  descended  to  it 
from  a  remote  antiquity,  through  a  long  succession 
of  ages."  (Rev.  George  Rawlinson,  M. A.,  in  "Lex 
Mosaica,"  p.  29.) 

3.  The  theory  is  still  further  discredited  by  the 
arbitrary  methods  of  its  author.  To  assure  yourself 
of  this,  you  have  only  to  take  down  the  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica  and  turn  to  the  article  "  Israel," 
by  Julius  Wellhausen.  You  will  find  that,  in  giv- 
ing an  outline  of  the  history  of  Israel,  he  freely 
reconstructs  it  at  his  own  sweet  will.  He  is 
not  embarrassed  by  the  Hebrew  history  books  at 
all.  He  inserts  incidents  which  the  text  knows 
nothing  of  —  for  example,  that  there  was  a  battle 
on  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea  between  the  Egyptians 

1  See  Art.  "Pentateucli,"  Vol.  IX,  p.  SOS,  by  Joseph  Jacobs. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  95 

and  the  Israelites.  On  the  other  hand  he  arbi- 
trarily rejects  the  testimony  of  the  Hebrew  text; 
and  again  urges  arguments  as  based  upon  the 
narrative,  which  the  narrative  does  not  support. 
One  of  his  arguments  against  the  Mosaic  author- 
ship of  the  Decalogue  is  that  Moses  clearly  did  not 
object  to  graven  images,  inasmuch  as  he  "  made 
a  brazen  serpent  which  down  to  Hezekiah's  time 
continued  to  be  worshiped  at  Jerusalem  as  an 
image  of  Jehovah."  *  I  ask,  Is  a  writer  who  can 
thus  boldly  and  completely  misrepresent  the  his- 
torical facts  in  his  search  for  an  argument,  —  is 
such  an  author  a  reliable  guide  in  the  study  of  the 
Scriptures  ? 

Another  example  of  Wellhausen's  arbitrary  method 
may  be  given.  He  declares  magisterially  that  the 
principle  of  "  One  God,  one  Sanctuary  "  was  never 
heard  of  in  Jewish  history  till  the  time  of  Josiah. 
Yet  the  books  of  Samuel  and  the  Kings  testify 
clearly  to  the  contrary.  Why,  then,  is  their  testi- 
mony not  to  be  received.''  "The  view  is  unhistori- 
cal,"  replies  Wellhausen.  In  what  way  ?  Because 
subsequent  histoiy  shows  that  the  high  places  were 
not  removed.  In  other  words,  the  Law  could  not 
have  existed,  because  it  was  violated!  But  upon 
what  testimony  is  Wellhausen  convinced  that  Josiah 
established  the  one  central  sanctuarj'  ?  On  the 
1  Art.  "Israel,"  p.  399. 


96  THE  PENTATEUCH 

testimony  of  that  same  book  of  Kings,  whose  state- 
ments he  has  just  declared  unhistorical. 

In  further  illustration  of  the  arbitraiy  methods 
of  the  Wellhausen  school,  I  now  direct  your  atten- 
tion to  a  passage  in  Dr.  Driver's  edition  of  the 
book  of  Genesis.  Commenting  on  Genesis  x.  22, 
where  Elam  is  mentioned  as  one  of  "the  children 
of  Sliem,"  Dr.  Driver  says: 

"  Racially  the  Elamites  were  entirely  distinct  from 
the  Semites  ...  It  is  true,  inscriptions  recently 
discovered  seem  to  have  shown  that  in  very  early 
times  Elam  was  peopled  by  Semites  .  .  .  and  that 
the  non-Semitic  Elamites  spoken  of  above  only 
acquired  mastery  over  it  at  a  period  approaching 
2300  B.C.,  but  the  fact  is  not  one  which  the  writer 
of  the  verse  is  very  likely  to  have  knowTi." 

Now,  what  is  the  natural  inference  from  these 
inscriptions  which  archaeology  has  brought  to  light? 
Surely  it  is  a  confirmation  of  the  accuracy  of  the 
statement  of  Genesis  that  Elam  was  one  of  the 
descendants  of  Shem!  Surely,  also,  we  naturally 
infer  from  this  archaeological  fact  that  "  the  book  of 
Genesis  quotes  documents,  or  reports  conditions,  at 
least  as  old  as  2300  B.C.,"  and  this  strengthens  our 
confidence  in  the  antiquity  and  accuracy  of  the 
narratives  in  that  book.  'NMiy,  then,  does  not  Dr. 
Driver  draw  these  obvious  inferences  ?  "  Because," 
replies  the  Dean   of  Canterbury,   to  whom  I  am 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  97 

indebted  for  this  example,  "he  is  possessed  by  the 
theory,  which  is  one  of  'the  assured  results'  of 
which  he  speaks,  that  the  verse  belongs  to  the  por- 
tions of  the  chapter  assigned  to  the  source  P,  which 
he  considers  belongs  to  the  age  of  Ezekiel  and  the 
Exile,  or  nearly  two  thousand  years  after  the  date 
when  Elam  was  peopled  by  Semites."  I  do  not 
wonder  that  Dr.  Wace  exclaims,  "  It  would  surely  be 
difficult  to  find  a  more  perverse  piece  of  criticism ! "  ^ 
4.  This  theory,  I  have  said,  is  insecure  because 
built  upon  too  narrow  a  foundation  —  viz.,  philology. 
But  the  philological  argument  is  not  by  any  means 
wholly  on  one  side.  Prof.  Margoliouth  has  turned 
the  sword  of  philology  against  the  Graf-Wellhausen 
critics.  Here  is  a  meager  outline  of  his  argument :  "^ 
One  of  the  books  of  the  Apocrypha,  Ecclesiasticus, 
was  written  by  Ben-Sira. 

(1)  The  book  was  originally  written  in  Hebrew. 

(2)  The  original  has  been  lost;  but 

(3)  The  Talmud  contains  some  thirty  or  forty 
quotations  from  it. 

(4)  The  grandson  of  Ben-Sira  translated  the  work 
of  his  grandfather  into  Greek. 

(5)  The  age  when  the  grandson  lived  is  known; 

(6)  And  thereby  it  is  placed  beyond  doubt  that 
the  date  of  Ecclesiasticus  is  about  200  B.C. 

» The  Churchman,  London,  July,  1905,  p.  505. 
2  By  Maxwell  M.  Ben-Oliel. 


98  THE  PENTATEUCH 

(7)  Besides  this  Greek  version  we  have  another  in 
Syriac,  and  others  in  Latin,  Armenian,  ^Ethiopic,  etc. 

(8)  The  language  in  which  Ben-Sira  wrote  his 
proverbs  is  not  the  language  of  the  Biblical  period, 
nor  that  of  the  post-exilic  prophets;  it  is  the  new 
Hebrew  of  the  Mishna. 

(9)  The  difference  between  the  Hebrew  of  Ben- 
Sira  and  that  of  the  Old  Testament  writers  is  marked 
in  every  one  of  the  seven  ways  in  which  language 
travels. 

(10)  Therefore  a  long  period  of  time  lies  between 
the  writers  of  the  Bible  and  the  time  of  Ben-Sira;  and 

(11)  As  the  date  of  Ben-Sira  is  200  B.C.,  the  latest 
writers  of  the  Old  Testament  must  be  placed  back 
hundreds  of  years  to  allow  for  the  vast  changes  in 
the  language  as  we  find  it  in  Ben-Sira's  days. 

To  use  Prof.  Margoliouth's  own  language: 
"  If  by  200  B.C.  the  whole  Rabbinic  farrago,  with 
its  terms  and  phrases  and  idioms  and  particles, 
was  developed,  and  was  the  classical  language  of 
Jerusalem,  and  the  medium  for  prayer  and  philo- 
sophical and  religious  instruction  and  speculations, 
then  between  Ben-Sira  and  the  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  there  must  lie  centuries,  nay,  there  must 
lie,  in  most  cases,  the  deep  waters  of  the  captivity, 
the  grave  of  the  old  Hebrew  and  the  old  Israel,  and 
the  womb  of  the  new  Hebrew  and  the  new  Israel."  * 
>  Inaugural  Lecture,  Oxford,  1889,  p.  21. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  99 

5.  Another  serious  blow  to  the  accuracy  of  Well- 
hausen  has  been  given  by  Dr.  Fritz  Hommel  in  the 
demonstration  of  the  important  fact  "that  the 
numerous  personal  names  ascribed  to  patriarchal 
and  Mosaic  times  were  in  general  use  at  this  very 
period;  and  could  not  have  been  invented  in  or 
after  the  time  of  the  Kings  —  when  a  totally  different 
system  of  nomenclature  obtained."  Wellhausen  has 
said,  "The  long  lists  of  names  in  Numbers  i.,  vii., 
and  xiii.  are  nearly  all  cast  in  the  same  mold,  and 
are  in  no  way  similar  to  genuine  ancient  personal 
names."  Dr.  Hommel's  refutation  of  this  assertion 
should  be  carefully  read.  Id.  pp.  119  and  297. 

6.  But  the  most  important,  perhaps,  of  all  the 
considerations  which  show  the  unsoundness  of 
Wellhausen's  theory  is,  that  it  is  contradicted  by 
the  history  which  all  parties  to  this  discussion  accept 
as  authentic.  The  palmary  argument  for  his  views 
is  the  correspondence  between  the  law  and  the 
history.  He  alleges  a  threefold  correspondence: 
the  Books  of  the  Covenant  (Ex.  xx.-xxiii.  and 
xxxiv.  10,  14-26),  with  the  history  down  to  Josiah's 
reformation;  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  with  the 
history  after  that  reformation ;  and  the  Priestly  Code 
with  the  history  after  the  Exile. 

It  is  this  third  instance  of  correspondence  which 
Wellhausen  has,  it  is  alleged,  been  the  first  to 
establish  on  a  firm  basis.     Now  it  has  been  shown, 


100  THE  PENTATEUCH 

I  think,  conclusively  that  his  theory  breaks  down 
in  this  its  most  conspicuous  feature;  that  is  to  say, 
that  his  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  the  Priestly  Code 
in  the  time  of  Ezra,  444  B.C.,  does  not  correspond 
with  the  history.  He  bids  us  read  the  account  of 
the  publication  (or  republication)  of  the  Law  as 
recorded  in  Nehemiah  viii.-x.,  and  note  the  fact  that 
when  the  book  is  read  aloud  to  the  people  its  con- 
tents were  unfamiliar  to  them  —  were  in  fact  new, 
and  then  he  argues  that  it  could  not  have  been 
known  previously,  and  must  have  had  its  origin  at 
that  time,  or  very  shortly  before. 

But  observe  what  is  involved  in  this  method  of 
argument.  The  book  then  read  to  the  people  was, 
according  to  Wellhausen,  the  whole  Pentateuch. 
Now  the  Pentateuch  embraced  the  Books  of  the 
Covenant  and  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  each  of 
which  contained  laws  which  are  (if  we  are  to  believe 
the  critics  of  this  school)  in  direct  conflict  with  the 
laws  of  the  so-called  Priestly  Code.  But  the  Books 
of  the  Covenant  (see  Exodus  xx.  24),  they  say, 
legalize  altars  and  sacrifices,  anywhere  and  in  how 
many  places  soever,  while  the  Priestly  Code  limits 
them  to  one  altar  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem. 
Again,  Deuteronomy  gives  to  all  Levites  the  pre- 
rogatives of  the  priesthood,  but  the  Priestly  Code 
excludes  the  Levites  from  the  priesthood.  Is  it  con- 
ceivable, then,  that  the  priests,  who  had  fabricated 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  101 

this  Priestly  Code  in  their  own  interest,  would 
have  published  as  canonical  at  the  same  time 
these  two  codes,  the  Books  of  the  Covenant  and 
Deuteronomy,  which  impose,  with  all  the  author- 
ity of  the  name  of  Moses,  laws  which  are  in 
direct  conflict  with  the  very  code  which  they  have 
taken  so  much  pains  to  clothe  with  the  Mosaic 
dress  in  order  to  secure  the  weight  of  his  venerable 
name? 

But  this  is  not  all.  Wellhausen  aflfirms  that  the 
Books  of  the  Covenant  had  been  in  existence  since 
about  900  B.C.,  and  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  since 
623  B.C.,  and  yet  he  admits  that  when  the  Penta- 
teuch, which  embraced  both  these  codes,  was  read 
to  the  people  by  Ezra,  its  contents  were  evidently 
new  to  the  people.  It  follows  that  unfamiliarity 
with  a  legal  code  does  not  necessarily  prove  that  the 
code  itself  was  new,  but  only  that  it  had  been  lost 
or  forgotten.  Hence  it  is  not  to  be  concluded  that 
the  Priestly  Code,  either,  was  something  new  merely 
because  it  was  unfamiliar  when  read  to  the  people 
by  Ezra  in  444  B.C.  It  may,  like  the  other  two 
codes,  have  been  of  ancient  origin,  but  have  become 
forgotten  in  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  conditions  of 
the  captivity. 

Thus  this  much  vaunted  argument  of  the  corre- 
spondence between  the  law  and  the  history  breaks 
down  completely. 


102  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Let  me  now,  in  conclusion,  sum  up  the  results  of 
this  lecture.  The  theory  of  the  dominant  school 
of  critics  as  to  the  origin  and  character  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch has  been  shown  to  be  burdened  with  an 
immense  antecedent  improbability,  besides  involving 
consequences  destructive  of  the  authority  and  cred- 
ibility of  the  books,  —  destructive  also  of  the  divine 
origin  of  the  Jewish  religion  and  of  the  divine 
authority  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  It  has  been 
shown  that,  in  spite  of  the  great  weight  of  modern 
scholarship  which  has  been  thrown  into  the  scale  in 
its  favor,  this  theory  is  stoutly  contested  by  a  group 
of  very  accomplished  scholars.  Then  we  have  seen 
that,  taken  on  its  merits,  there  are  a  number  of 
cogent  reasons  for  rejecting  this  popular  hypothesis : 
as  these,  (l)  It  is  built  too  exclusively  on  philology; 
history  and  archaeology  being  not  sufficiently  recog- 
nized as  factors  in  the  problem.  (2)  It  relies  on  two 
assumptions,  of  very  doubtful  validity.  (3)  It  is 
discredited  by  the  arbitrary  methods  of  its  author 
and  his  followers.  (4)  Philology  itself  furnishes  a 
valid  argument  against  it.  (5)  Archaeology  supplies 
another.  (6)  It  is  out  of  harmony  with  the  accepted 
history  of  the  periods  at  which  the  books  are  alleged 
to  have  had  their  origin. 

Of  course,  my  limits  have  forbidden  my  attempt- 
ing more  than  a  meager  outline  of  the  arguments 
which  are  brought  forward  in   refutation   of  this 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  103 

elaborate  theory,  but  I  hope  enough  of  the  argument 
against  it  has  been  developed  to  make  it  clear  to 
your  minds  that  it  is  far  indeed  from  offering  that 
conclusive  proof  which  alone  would  entitle  it  to 
acceptance.  For  let  me  again  remind  you  that 
when  we  are  asked  to  adopt  views  of  the  nature  and 
structure  of  Holy  Scripture  which  are  nothing  less 
than  revolutionary,  we  are  entitled  to  demand  proof, 
clear,  positive,  unassailable,  conclusive.^  We  cannot 
lightly  barter  away  our  birthright.  We  cannot  sur- 
render the  belief  inherited  from  the  Christian  ages, 
and  supported  by  the  authority  of  Christ  himself, 
in  the  antiquity  and  authority  of  the  Pentateuch, 
at  the  challenge  of  a  theory,  which  is  at  best  sup- 
ported by  nothing  better  than  plausible  arguments, 
and  which  is  open  to  the  very  serious  objections 
which  we  have  seen  may  be  brought  against  it. 

1  It  is  admitted  by  some  of  the  advocates  of  the  dominant 
theory,  that  the  spade  of  the  archaeologist  may  any  day  undermine 
and  discredit  it  fatally.  Thus  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  Dr. 
Gibson,  writes: 

"Fresh  discoveries  may  any  day  be  made  which  will  upset  the 
dominant  theory,  and  so  long  as  the  spade  of  the  explorer  is  at 
work,  and  new  facts  come  to  light,  the  conclusions  of  the  critics 
must  be  subject  to  review."  This  is  a  naive  confession  of  the 
subjective  character  of  the  criticism  on  which  the  theory  is  built. 
Yet  it  is  constantly  put  forward  as  "an  assured  result,"  to  the 
distress  of  multitudes  of  souls,  and  the  disturbance  of  the  faith 
of  not  a  few. 


LECTURE   III 


"  OvTOi  01  "KdyoL  ovs  iXaXyjcre  Mojvcrijs  Travrl  'IcrparjX  w^pav  tov 
'lopSdvou   iv  rrj  ip-^fiip."     Deut.  i.  1. 

"The  newer  criticism  not  merely  offers  to  correct  particular 
points  in  the  narrations  of  the  Old  Testament,  wliich  would  be 
comparatively  admissible,  but  it  pronounces  the  whole  represen- 
tation of  Old  Testament  history,  as  we  read  it  in  the  Bible,  and 
as  Jesus  read  it  and  acknowledged  it,  to  be  false.  It  further 
describes  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  as  having  been  pro- 
duced, almost  without  exception,  by  a  series  of  editings,  curtail- 
ments, augmentations  and  dislocations  of  the  original  text;  so 
that  the  resulting  Scriptures  come  before  us  with  a  character 
which  is  the  very  reverse  of  trustworthiness." 

Prof.  Lotz  of  Erlangen. 

"Clouds  which  are  formed  in  the  time  of  grandsires  are  not 
in  the  habit  of  raining  upon  grandsons.  Could  people  not 
write  in  preexilic  times?  Must  they  not  be  allowed  to  write? 
Why  tear  with  violence  the  pen  from  the  hand  of  the  ancient 
Israelitish  priests?"  Bredenkamp. 

"The  question  is  whether  the  palm  of  ingenuity  is  to  be 
assigned  to  the  writers  of  these  books  or  to  the  modem  critics; 
whether  a  school  composed  of  men  like  Ezekiel  and  Ezra  were 
likely  to  have,  mth  boundless  inventiveness,  concocted  all  this 
history,  or  our  modern  critics  are  ransacking  the  treasures  of 
their  wits  to  find  an  artificial  explanation  of  a  thing  that  is  much 
more  simple  than  they  make  it  ? " 

Dr.  Jas.  Robertson. 


106 


LECTURE    III 

Hitherto  I  have  adduced  considerations,  for 
the  most  part  of  a  general  nature,  to  show  the 
inconclusiveness  of  the  arguments  by  which  the 
modem  theory  of  the  origin  and  character  of 
the  Pentateuch  is  supported.  I  now  propose  to 
come  to  closer  quarters  with  the  subject,  upon  some 
of  the  cardinal  points  at  issue,  and  to  indicate  some 
of  the  lines  of  defense  of  the  belief  of  the  Christian 
Church  in  the  antiquity  and  authority  of  these 
venerable  books  as  against  the  views  of  the  domi- 
nant school  of  critics.  I  shall  first  take  up  the 
argument  from  the  contents  of  the  writings  of  the 
prophets  Amos  and  Hosea  (of  the  eighth  century 
B.C.)  and  of  Ezekiel  (of  the  sixth  century),  and  then 
I  shall  take  up,  somewhat  more  at  length,  the 
Deuteronomy  problem,  which  may  be  considered 
the  pivot  of  the  whole  theory  against  which  I 
contend. 

Linguistic  arguments  I  shall  pass  by  as  the  special 
province  of  experts  in  philology,  but  the  historical 
issue  ought  to  be  intelligible  to  us  all,  and  it  would 
107 


108  THE  PENTATEUCH 

seem  that  historical  considerations  must  be  decisive 
of  the  chief  matters  in  question. 

Now,  just  as  the  apologist  for  Christianity  a 
generation  ago  found  firm  ground  for  his  defense  of 
Christianity  in  the  first  four  Epistles  of  St.  Paul, 
whose  genuineness  could  not  be  denied  by  their 
opponents,  so  we  may  find  in  the  extant  writings  of 
Amos,  Hosea,  and  Ezekiel  a  sound  basis  for  our 
argument  against  the  theory  that  the  book  of  Deute- 
ronomy is  a  tissue  of  fictions  dating  from  about 
621  B.C.,  and  that  the  Priestly  Code  (large  parts  of 
Genesis,  Exodus,  Leviticus  and  Numbers)  was  also 
a  legendary  work  of  the  time  of  Ezra.  All  the  great 
doctrines  of  Christianity  can  be  established  from 
the  undisputed  Epistles  to  the  Romans,  Galatians, 
and  Corinthians;  and  in  Hke  manner  the  main  facts 
of  Jewish  history,  and  the  main  institutions  of  the  so- 
called  Mosaic  legislation,  can  be  established  as  the 
accepted  beliefs  of  the  Jews  in  their  times,  from  the 
books  of  Amos,  Hosea,  and  Ezekiel,  which  the  critics 
generally  acknowledge  to  be  genuine  and  authentic. 

We  open  these  prophetic  writings,  then,  and  ask. 
Do  they  support  the  Graf-Wellhausen  theory  of  the 
date  and  character  of  the  early  books  of  the  Bible .'' 
The  English  reader  will  be  quite  able,  by  careful 
scrutiny,  I  think,  to  see  that  they  do  not  support  it. 
He  will  find  that  these  acknowledged  writings  of 
the  eighth  century  B.C.  —  I  mean  Amos  and  Hosea 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  109 

—  presuppose  much  of  the  history  and  many  of  the 
institutions  of  the  Pentateuch,  just  as  the  writings 
of  the  early  Fathers  presuppose  the  Gospels.  And 
although  the  famous  saying  that,  if  the  Gospels  had 
been  lost,  they  could  be  reconstructed  out  of  the 
writings  of  the  Fathers,  could  not  be  paralleled  in 
the  case  of  the  Prophets  and  the  Pentateuchal' 
history,  yet  we  can  say  that  enough  of  that  early 
history  is  found  imbedded  in  these  prophetical  books 
to  convince  us  of  the  unreliability  of  the  theory  that 
the  Prophets  are  older  than  the  Law,  and  that  those 
books  which  the  Church  has  for  nineteen  hundred 
years  believed  to  be  historical,  are  in  reality  (save  a 
very  trifling  residuum  of  history)  the  work  of  priestly 
legend-spinners  in  the  age  of  Ezra.  Let  me  here 
avail  myself  of  the  words  of  a  writer  who  seems  to 
me  to  have  dealt  the  theories  of  the  negative  critics 
a  blow  almost  as  crushing  as  was  dealt  the  author 
of  "Supernatural  Religion"  some  fifteen  years  ago 
by  the  great  Lightfoot,  —  I  mean  Prof.  Robertson 
of  Glasgow.  He  says,  "  Amos  and  Hosea  are  found 
to  hold  essentially,  for  the  period  succeeding  Moses, 
the  same  scheme  of  history  which  is  by  modern 
critics  pronounced  to  be  late  and  unhistorical."  "  I 
take  it  that  the  views  of  Israel's  past  history  given 
by  the  prophets  of  the  eighth  century  (b.c.)  were 
the  views  entertained  by  the  nation  generally  in 
their  time.     These  views,  so  far  as  they  amount  to 


110  THE  PENTATEUCH 

a  comprehensive  conception  of  the  history  as  a 
whole,  agree  exactly  with  the  views  of  the  Hebrew 
historians,  and  so  far  as  reference  is  made  to  actual 
occurrences  in  the  history,  the  prophets  are  at  one 
with  the  historians.  The  great  landmarks  are 
clearly  traceable:  the  deliverance  from  Egypt,  the 
guidance  in  the  wilderness,  the  conquest  of  Canaan, 
the  continuance  of  God-guided  men  in  the  nation, 
the  preeminence  of  the  house  of  David." 

Another  able  writer.  Prof.  Stanley  Leathes,  ad- 
duces forty-five  allusions  to  the  books  of  Moses  in 
the  prophet  Amos,  and  concludes,  ''There  is  ap- 
parent acquaintance  with  and  reference  to  each 
book  of  the  Pentateuch  in  this  prophet.  What  is 
there  to  show  that  the  apparent  acquaintance  was 
not  real  and  that  the  references  were  not  intentional  ? 
[The  Priestly  Code  is  impHed  in  ii.  4,  7,  8,  12;  iv.  4,  5; 
v.  12,  21,  22;  ix.  4,  etc.;  and  yet  Amos  flourished  in 
the  former  half  of  the  eighth  century  B.C." 

Allusions  are  found  in  Amos  to  the  Exodus,  the 
overthrow  of  Sodom,  the  gigantic  stature  of  the 
Amorites,  the  sacrifices  of  the  Law,  the  Nazarite 
vow,  etc.  "  Thus  Amos  presupposes  that  his  hearers 
were  well  acquainted  with  the  Pentateuch,  and  had 
a  firm  belief  in  its  history:  otherwise  much  of  the 
prophecy  would  have  lost  its  force,  or  have  been 
unintelligible."  * 

1  "The  Law  and  the  Prophets,"  p.  160. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  111 

Similar  are  the  phenomena  in  the  prophecy  of 
Hosea,  another  prophet  of  the  eighth  century  b.c. 
He  alludes  to  God's  "covenant"  with  Israel,  and 
to  his  "Law."  In  viii.  12  ("though  I  wrote  for 
him  the  ten  thousand  things  of  my  Law"),  the 
prophet  alludes  to  a  copious  written  law  of  divine 
authority.  See  also  viii.  13,  ix.  10,  xi.  1,  5;  xii.  9, 
and  xiii.  4. 

I  may  here  refer  to  an  important  essay  by  the 
same  writer  upon  the  eighth  century  B.C.,  in  the 
volume  entitled  "Lex  Mosaica,"  1894,  in  which 
the  writer  says,  "It  seems  impossible  to  set  aside 
the  multiplicity  of  evidence  which  is  found  in  Hosea/ 
of  his  acquaintance  with  every  book  of  the  Penta-j 
teuch.  This  evidence  is  not  obtrusive  and  super-j 
ficial,  but  it  is  latent,  and  yet  conspicuous  wherr' 
attention  is  drawn  to  it.  Nothing  but  blind  attach- 
ment to  a  favorite  hypothesis  can  make  us  insensible 
to  the  manifold  indications  of  familiarity  with  the 
language,  the  promises,  the  threatenings,  and  the 
history  of  the  books  of  Moses." 

The  writer  then  directs  attention  to  the  internal 
evidence  that  Hosea  was  familiar  with  the  book 
Deuteronomy  two  centuries  before  the  time  which 
the  critics  assign  to  its  composition.  Hosea  shows 
familiarity  also  with  the  history  of  Genesis,  Exodus, 
and  Numbers,  and  makes  such  "reference  to  the 
books  of  Samuel,  Judges,  and  Joshua  as  can  only 


112  THE  PENTATEUCH 

be  explained  by  supposing  him  to  have  had  those 
documents  before  him."     He  concludes  thus: 

"Repeated  consideration  of  these  passages  has 
served  to  convince  me  that  the  late  origin  of  the 
Law  in  the  time  of  the  Exile,  or  later,  is  a  pure 
fiction." 

THE   ARGUMENT   FROM   EZEKIEL 

This  prophet  is  considered  by  Kuenen  and  Well- 
hausen  as  the  father  of  Judaism,  the  real  creator 
of  the  Priestly  and  Levitical  system  as  we  find  it  in 
the  Pentateuch.  He  and  his  "  school "  are  declared 
to  have  "  attributed,  with  innocence  and  satisfaction, 
fictions  and  codes  which  were  the  growth  of  ages  to 
God  by  the  immediate  instrumentality  of  Moses 
and  Aaron."  It  is  even  asserted  by  Wellhausen 
that  the  paternity  of  the  Levitical  Code  is  so  clearly 
Ezekiel's  that  to  deny  it  is  to  incur  ridicule  as  a 
person  incompetent  to  understand  critical  pro- 
cesses.^ 

Nevertheless,  the  argument  against  it  appears  to 
not  a  few  able  and  competent  critics  conclusive. 
It  is  pointed  out  that  the  chapters  (xl.  to  xlviii.)  in 
Ezekiel  can  only  be  made  to  support  the  theory  by 
treating  one  part  as  a  practical  programme  and 
the  other  as  an  ideal  picture.  Two  thirds  of  it 
being  "clearly  ideal,"  how  can  the  other  third  be 

»  "The  Early  Religion  of  Israel,"  p.  430. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  113 

treated  as  a  "  serious  historical  programme "  ?  If 
the  measurements  of  the  temple  and  of  the  Holy 
Land  and  the  situation  of  the  tribes  are  not  to  be 
taken  as  matters  of  fact,  why  should  what  he  says 
of  the  ritual  and  the  ordinances  of  worship  be  so 
treated  ? 

Again,  it  is  urged  that  it  is  immensely  improbable 
that  men  like  Ezekiel  should  have  "  invented  a  false 
historical  setting  for  the  laws  of  the  Levitical  Code, 
by  carrying  them  back  to  Moses  and  the  desert, 
simply  in  order  to  give  the  Law  higher  sanction." 
According  to  this  theory  there  never  was  a  taber- 
nacle, and  the  other  chief  early  institutions  were 
equally  of  fictitious  origin  —  the  fruit  of  the  "  legend- 
spinning  invention  "  of  men  of  the  post-exilic  period. 

But  to  come  to  closer  quarters  with  the  com- 
parison between  Ezekiel  and  the  Priestly  Code  in 
the  Pentateuch,  it  is  pointed  out  (a)  that  the  two 
have  a  different  theological  standpoint;  (6)  that  they 
live  in  different  worlds,  —  there  is  in  the  latter  no 
complexion  of  later  history,  or  later  allusion;  the 
two  use  different  vocabularies;  the  atmosphere  is 
different;  the  style  is  sharply  contrasted;  the  idol- 
atry-legislation contains  no  allusion  to  the  more 
modern  forms  of  idolatrous  worship.  Li  a  word, 
the  prima  facie  view  of  the  two  writings  "  would  on 
any  rule  of  literary  analogy  place  them  ages  wide 
apart."     (c)   A    strong    evidence  of    the  antiquity 


114  THE  PENTATEUCH 

of  the  P  document  is  the  accuracy  of  its  local 
references  to  Egypt  and  the  Peninsula  of  Sinai. 
It  is  free  from  the  slips  which  could  not  but  char- 
acterize it,  had  it  been  written  in  Babylonia  in  that 
late  age.  It  shows  an  archaeological  accuracy  in 
the  use  of  terms,  words,  linens,  etc.  "  With  the 
Priestly  school  working  thus  with  a  free  hand,  and 
giving  the  reins  to  their  fancy,  as  this  theory  de- 
mands, it  would  be  quite  unnatural  not  to  find  in 
their  writing  some  trace  of  the  influence  of  Ezekiel 
and  of  Babylonia,  and  their  exilic  and  post-exilic 
surroundings;  equally  unnatural  to  find  continuous 
traces  of  quite  other  and  different  and  more  ancient 
surroundings  in  the  very  work  which  is  due  to  their 
pure  imagination.  A  study  of  their  supposed  writing 
has  been  shown  to  indicate,  in  very  prominent  par- 
ticulars, no  traces  of  Ezekiel  or  Babylonia,  but 
distinct  traces  of  Egypt  and  the  desert."  (d)  It  is 
further  urged  that  a  careful  study  of  Ezekiel  shows 
that  he  was  well  acquainted  with  P,  for  he  "not 
only  uses  the  expressions  of  the  Priest's  Code,"  but 
writes  as  one  whose  mind  was  impregnated  with 
them,  and  he  takes  for  granted  a  familiarity  there- 
with on  the  part  of  the  people  whom  he  addressed. 
These  are  a  few  of  the  matters  found  in  Ezekiel 
which  are  urged  as  negativing  the  theory  of  Well- 
hausen  that  the  P  document  —  that  is  a  large  part 
of  the  Pentateuch  —  was  the  creation  of  an  Ezekiel 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  115 

school  of  priests  in  the  post-exiHc  period.  My 
purpose,  of  course,  is  only  to  indicate  the  lines 
of  defense  against  this  attack  upon  the  historical 
character  of  the  Pentateuch,  believing  that  these 
arguments  as  presented  by  Prof.  James  Robert- 
son in  his  "  Early  Religion  of  Israel "  and  by  several 
vrriters  in  "Lex  Mosaica"  (1884)  are  of  great  force, 
and  go  far  towards  overthrowing  the  theory  above 
described.^ 

THE   DEUTERONOMY   PROBLEM 

The  importance  of  the  problem  presented  by  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy  in  the  critical  controversy 
is  of  the  first  order.  Its  origin  about  621  B.C.  is 
recognized  on  all  hands  as  one  of  the  pillars  of 
Wellhausen's  system,  though  it  did  not,  of  course, 
originate  with  him.  Accordingly  he  is  (suo  more) 
very  dogmatic  in  asserting  the  finality  of  the  hypoth- 
esis on  that  point.     This  is  his  language: 

"In  all  centers  where  scientific  results  may  hope 
for  recognition,  it  is  admitted  that  Deuteronomy 
was  written  at  the  time  at  which  it  was  discovered." 

Dr.  Driver  is  equally  positive  in  asserting  that  the 

1 1  would  refer  here  to  "Sanctuary  and  Sacrifice,"  by  W.  L. 
Baxter,  D.D.  (Eyre  and  Spottiswoode,  1895).  It  refutes  the 
Graf-Wellhausen  theories  by  patient  inductive  proof.  Mr. 
Gladstone  said  of  some  of  his  essays,  "Unless  your  searching 
inquiry  can  be  answered,  Wellhausen's  character,  both  hterary 
and  theological,  is  destroyed." 


116  THE  PENTATEUCH 

book  is  "  by  unanimous  consent "  of  critical  scholars 
assigned  without  hesitation  to  a  late  date. 

Yet  this  view  is  stoutly  contested  by  such  scholars 
as  Klostermann,  Hommel,  Kohler,  Robertson, 
and  Delitzsch. 

We  are  entitled,  then,  to  demand  the  proofs  of 
this  assertion  that  this  venerable  book  had  its  origin 
in  the  reign  of  Josiah,  some  eight  hundred  years 
after  the  time  of  Moses,  and  was,  therefore,  "a 
downright  forgery  on  a  grand  scale "  —  to  use 
Hommel's  phrase. 

Well,  in  the  first  place,  the  passage  in  2  Kings  xxii. 
is  appealed  to,  where  we  are  told  of  the  discovery  in 
the  Temple,  by  Hilkiah,  of  the  book  of  the  Law. 
But  you  will  observe  here  that  the  sacred  historian 
gives  us  no  intimation  that  the  book  then  found, 
whether  Deuteronomy  or  the  whole  Pentateuch,  was 
then  first  composed,  but  rather  clearly  implies  that 
the  King  and  the  people  believed  it  to  be,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  the  ancient  book  of  the  Law.  On  what 
ground,  then,  do  these  critics  base  their  assertion, 
or  their  inference,  that  the  book  then  found  was 
recently  composed?  They  base  it  on  the  assump- 
tion that  since  its  contents  came  as  a  surprise  and 
shock  to  the  King  and  the  priests  and  the  people,  it 
must  have  been  an  unknown  book  to  them,  and 
therefore  a  book  recently  written.  But  this  assump- 
tion is  by  no  means  self-evident.     It  is  not  axiomatic. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  117 

It  requires  proof.  We  demand,  why  might  it  not  be 
a  book  of  ancient  origin  which  had  been  lost  and 
forgotten  ?  Seventy-four  years  before  the  discovery 
of  this  book,  Manasseh  ascended  the  throne  of 
Judah,  and  very  soon  directed  all  his  energies  with 
fanatical  zeal  to  extirpate  the  worship  of  Jehovah 
and  establish  in  its  stead  idolatry  in  manifold  forms. 
He  even  set  up  an  idol  in  the  Temple  itself.  It  was 
a  reign  of  terror  for  the  adherents  of  the  Mosaic 
religion.  Would  it  be  strange  if  the  few  copies  of 
the  books  of  the  Law  had  disappeared  during  the 
seventy-five  years  of  religious  persecution,  and  that 
the  terrible  denunciations  of  the  book  of  Deute- 
ronomy had  been  forgotten  by  priest  and  people.? 

But  observe  here  the  strange  inconsistency  of  the 
Wellhausen  school.  They  acknowledge  that  the 
two  so-called  Books  of  the  Covenant,  Exod.  xx.-xxiii. 
and  xxxiv.  10,  14-26,  wrought  together  into  the 
sources  JE,  are  to  be  dated  before  the  Major 
Prophets.  Now  if  you  examine  these  passages  you 
will  find  that  they  contain  strong  prohibitions  of 
idolatry  and  denunciations  of  the  divine  judgment 
upon  those  who  worshiped  any  other  God  but 
Jehovah  alone.  For  instance,  "He  that  sacrificeth 
unto  any  God,  save  unto  the  Lord  only,  he  shall  be 
utterly  destroyed"  (xxii.  20).  King  Josiah,  there- 
fore, had  he  known  these  Books  of  the  Covenant, 
would  have  learned  from  them,  as  plainly  as  from 


118  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Deuteronomy,  the  divine  displeasure  and  the  divine 
threatenings  against  idolatry.  It  would  seem,  then, 
that  he  was  as  ignorant  of  the  former  as  he  was  of 
the  latter.  Consequently,  by  the  rule  of  the  critics, 
applied  to  Deuteronomy,  the  two  Books  of  the 
Covenant  could  not  have  been  of  ancient  origin  — 
they,  too,  must  have  been  recently  composed.  But 
instead  of  this  they  tell  us  the  Books  of  the  Covenant 
were  very  ancient,  perhaps  even  Mosaic  in  origin. 
By  parity  of  reason,  then,  Deuteronomy,  too,  may 
be  of  similarly  ancient  origin. 

Another  inconsistency  of  theirs  has  been  pointed 
out  in  this  connection.  They  argue  (very  incon- 
clusively, as  I  think)  from  Exodus  xx.  24  that  Moses 
allowed  the  building  of  altars  and  the  offering  of 
sacrifices  everywhere.  Yet  they  say  the  author 
of  Deuteronomy  assumed  the  name  of  Moses  in 
order  to  secure  acceptance  for  a  book  which  forbids 
but  one  altar,  and  makes  sacrifice  unlawful  any- 
where except  on  that  one  altar  at  Jerusalem !  This 
first  proof,  then,  turns  out  to  be  only  a  conjecture 
built  upon  another  conjecture.  That  is  to  say,  the 
theory  is  destitute  of  external  support.  Ewald's 
hypothesis  that  it  was  written  in  Egypt  is  worth 
just  as  much  and  just  as  little. 

Let  us  come,  then,  to  the  internal  evidence  relied 
on  to  destroy  the  historical  value  of  the  fourth  book 
of  the  Pentateuch. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  119 

(a)  Great  stress  is  laid,  first  of  all,  on  the  fact 
that  the  book  contains  a  prospective  provision  for 
changing  the  republican,  or  theocratic,  form  of 
government  into  a  monarchical  form.  But  when 
we  remember  that  Israel  was  probably  the  only 
people  who  in  the  time  of  Moses  were  not  ruled  by 
a  monarch,  why  should  not  Moses  have  foreseen 
that,  in  time,  Israel,  too,  would  desire  a  king  ?  And 
on  the  principles  of  a  believer  in  revelation,  why 
should  not  the  future  contingency  have  been  revealed 
to  the  divinely  commissioned  leader  and  lawgiver 
of  the  chosen  people  ?  And,  on  the  other  hand,  on 
what  principle  can  we  explain  a  writer  of  the  age 
of  Josiah,  after  the  monarchy  had  been  so  long 
established,  and  when  that  form  of  government  was 
universal,  representing  Israel  as  having  had  a  repub- 
lican, or  theocratic,  form  of  government  ? 

(6)  Again  it  is  urged  as  unhistorical  that  Moses 
should  have  set  forth  in  detail  and  at  length  the 
evils  and  inconveniences  of  kingly  rule,  as  Deute- 
ronomy represents  him  as  doing,  at  a  time  when 
they  were  not  governed  by  a  king.  But,  it  is 
answered,  would  it  be  any  more  natural  or  to  be 
expected,  as  Wellhausen's  theory  demands,  that  a 
writer  in  the  time  of  Josiah,  when  the  monarchy 
had  long  been  firmly  established,  and  when  from 
no  quarter  do  we  hear  any  hint  or  suggestion  of 
popular  government,  should  paint  in  lurid  colors 


120  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  evils  and  oppressions  to  be  expected  from  kingly 
rule? 

(c)  Another  argument  for  the  late  date  of  this 
book  is  found  in  the  fact  that  it  contains  alterations 
and  modifications  of  the  Law  as  established  in  the 
other  so-called  Mosaic  legislation.  But  was  it  not 
natural  that  the  changed  circumstances  of  the  people, 
having  the  desert  life  behind  them,  and  standing 
on  the  verge  of  their  entry  into  the  walled  cities  and 
cultivated  fields  of  Canaan,  should  have  made  neces- 
sary, or  at  least  desirable,  some  considerable  changes 
in  legislation  ? 

(d)  The  argument,  however,  on  which  Wellhausen 
chiefly  relies,  is  that  the  law  of  the  one  sanctuary 
as  set  forth  in  Deuteronomy  was  unknown  until  the 
days  of  Josiah.  The  principle  of  "  One  God  —  one 
sanctuary,"  he  says,  was  "  never  heard  of  till  Josiah." 
He  finds  no  evidence  of  it  in  the  history  down  to 
that  period.  And  yet  the  books  of  Samuel  and 
Kings  testify  to  the  contrary.  To  give  one  instance, 
1  Kings  iii.  2,  3,  in  mentioning  that  sacrifices  were 
offered  on  the  high  places,  distinctly  alludes  to  this 
being  in  conflict  with  the  law  of  the  one  sanctuary. 
See  also,  2  Kings  xviii.  4-6.  These  critics,  how- 
ever, are  not  embarrassed  by  this  evidence.  They 
ascribe  such  passages  to  a  "  Deuteronomic  revision  " 
of  the  books  of  Kings.  That  is  to  say,  the  witnesses 
are  reliable  when  they  testify  in  their  favor,  but 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  121 

their  veracity  is  promptly  impeached,  if  their  testi- 
mony is  on  the  other  side!  See  now  Wellhausen's 
colossal  inconsistency.  With  great  emphasis,  and 
complete  confidence,  he  argues  that  the  law  of  the 
one  sanctuary  was  not  observed  until  Josiah's  time, 
and  argues  from  this  that  it  is  inconceivable  that 
such  a  law  had  any  existence.  And  then  he  pro- 
ceeds to  acknowledge,  in  the  next  breath,  that  after 
the  death  of  Josiah  the  law  ceased  to  be  observed. 
In  the  very  next  reign  there  were  "almost  as  many 
altars  as  towns !  "  Non-observance  of  the  law  in 
the  epoch  after  Moses  is  proof  irrefragible  that  no 
such  law  existed  in  Moses's  time,  but  non-observance 
of  the  law  after  the  death  of  Josiah  does  not  prove 
the  non-existence  of  the  law  in  Josiah's  time. 
Such  a  logical  inconsistency  well  deserves  to  be 
called  colossal! 

(e)  Yet  another  argument  relied  on  to  destroy 
the  historic  credibility  of  Deuteronomy  is  that  it 
outlines  a  programme  of  legislation  that  in  important 
particulars  was  never  carried  out.  In  answer  to 
this  I  would  direct  your  attention  to  the  weighty 
words  of  Dean  Milman,  discussing  a  similar  theory 
nearly  fifty  years  ago.  He  writes:  "Now  a  jpro- 
s'pective  Utopia  in  the  mind  of  a  man  of  consum- 
mate wisdom  like  Moses  is  intelligible,  especially  at 
the  time  of  the  occupation  of  a  whole  country  by 
a  conquering  tribe,   and   its  partition   among  the 


122  THE  PENTATEUCH 

conquerors.  But  a  retrospective  Utopia,  purely 
imaginary,  as  an  afterthought  of  later  times,  and 
attributed  to  Moses,  when  it  was  known  never 
to  have  been  carried  into  effect,  seems  a  strange 
assumption."  * 

What  conceivable  motive  could  there  be  for  a 
late  writer  or  compiler  to  attribute  such  visionary 
and  unreal  schemes  to  the  great  lawgiver? 

(/)  But  again:  Wellhausen  argues  with  great 
force  and  plausibility  the  threefold  correspondence 
of  the  Law  with  the  history  of  Israel.  As  to  Deute- 
ronomy, it  is  argued  that  the  law  it  contains  corre- 
sponds with  the  history  of  Josiah's  reign;  in  fact, 
that  it  was  composed  with  a  view  to  bring  about 
the  reformation  which  actually  occurred  at  that 
time,  of  which  we  have  an  account  in  2  Kings  xxii. 

But  a  careful  study  of  the  contents  of  the  book 
will  show  that  it  does  not  fit  the  history,  and  that 
many  of  its  provisions  were  not  adapted  for  the 
time  or  the  circumstances  of  the  people  in  the  reign 
of  Josiah.  Let  me  enumerate  as  briefly  as  possible 
some  of  the  features  which  are  in  conflict  with  this 
theory.  The  reformation  of  King  Josiah  was  a 
religious  reformation;  but  the  legislation  of  Deute- 
ronomy pertains  in  great  part  to  the  civil  sphere. 
The  chief  emphasis  —  we  might  almost  say  the 
exclusive  emphasis  —  of  the  king's  reform  was  laid 
1  "  History  of  the  Jews,"  pp.  206,  207. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  123 

on  the  abolition  of  idolatry;  but  the  leading  feature 
in  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  is  the  centralization  of 
worship  —  the  abolition  of  all  altars  save  the  one 
in  Jerusalem.  In  the  seventh  century  b.c.  the  king- 
dom of  Judah  was  in  an  advanced  state  of  organiza- 
tion; but  the  legislation  of  Deuteronomy  was  of  a 
general  nature,  —  a  mere  outline  sketch,  —  unsuited 
to  the  stage  of  development  attained  by  that  time. 
Note,  also,  a  number  of  particular  injunctions 
entirely  unsuited  to  the  conditions  and  environment 
of  Josiah's  reign.  Why,  for  instance,  should  a 
writer  of  the  seventh  century  introduce  repeated 
injunctions  to  destroy  the  Canaanites  and  raze  their 
fortified  cities,  when  they  had  ceased  to  exist  as  a 
people  ?  Why,  again,  should  he  command  that  the 
Amalekites  should  be  utterly  exterminated  as  a 
retribution  for  their  opposition  to  Israel  in  the 
wilderness,  eight  centuries  before,  when,  in  fact, 
there  were  no  longer  any  Amalekites  to  be  found 
in  the  land?  (A  comparison  of  Deut.  xxv.  17-19 
with  1  Sam.  xxx.  1,  17,  shows  that  the  former  must 
antedate  the  time  of  Saul.  The  destruction  of  a 
small  remnant  of  Amalek,  recorded  in  1  Chron. 
iv.  41-43,  is  not  in  conflict  with  this  conclusion.) 
These  are  some  of  the  particulars  in  which  we  see 
that  the  actual  character  and  contents  of  Deute- 
ronomy are  quite  out  of  harmony  with  the  supposi- 
tion of  its  origin  in  the  seventh  century. 


124  THE  PENTATEUCH 

But  let  us  turn  to  the  other  side  of  the  argument. 
What  is  to  be  said  in  favor  of  the  early  date  and 
the  historic  truth  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  ? 

Now  at  the  outset  let  it  be  clearly  understood  that 
I  am  not  contending  for  the  Mosaic  authorship  of 
the  book  as  it  stands,  though  I  think  it  altogether 
likely  that  Moses  was  its  author,  but  for  the  sub- 
stantial antiquity  and  integrity  of  the  book,  and  its 
substantial  historical  accuracy.  Alterations  in  the 
text  —  modifications  in  certain  parts  —  we  not  only 
do  not  question,  but  would  be  forward  to  assert; 
but  these  are  not  of  suflBcient  importance  to  impair 
the  historic  truth  of  the  narrative  as  a  whole. 

In  brief,  then,  these  are  some  of  the  considerations 
which  sustain  that  view: 

1.  It  is  altogether  natural,  and  to  be  expected, 
that  the  great  lawgiver  should  have  given  such 
farewell  counsel  as  we  find  here,  and  that  on  the 
eve  of  the  conquest  of  Canaan  he  should  have  left 
on  record  such  a  recapitulation  and  codification  of 
the  laws  which  lie  in  the  text  of  Exodus,  Leviticus, 
and  Numbers,  in  some  confusion,  without  order, 
and  mixed  up  with  the  history  of  the  people  in  the 
wilderness. 

2.  We  find  traces  of  Deuteronomy  long  before 
the  seventh  century,  as  in  the  account  in  2  Kings 
xviii.  4-6  of  the  reformation  of  Hezekiah.  That 
monarch  removed  the  high  places  and  the  altars 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  125 

outside  of  the  Jewish  capital,  and  bid  the  people 
worship  at  one  altar  only.  We  find  this  reflected 
in  the  words  of  the  Rabshakeh  to  the  messengers  of 
Hezekiah : 

"  But  if  ye  say  unto  me.  We  trust  in  the  Lord  our 
God,  is  it  not  he  whose  high  places  and  whose 
altars  Hezekiah  hath  taken  away,  and  hath  said  to 
Judah  and  Jerusalem,  Ye  shall  worship  before  this 
altar  in  Jerusalem." 

Here  we  have  the  most  prominent  principle  of 
the  Deuteronomic  legislation  distinctly  recognized, 
viz.,  the  centralization  of  worship  at  Jerusalem. 
Another  trace  of  Deuteronomy  is  found  in  the 
reign  of  King  Amaziah,  797  B.C.,  by  comparing 
2  Kings  xiv.  6  with  Deuteronomy  xxiv.  16.  Yet 
another  is  found  in  comparing  Joshua  viii.  30,  etc., 
with  Deuteronomy  xxvii.  1,  etc. 

Further:  it  would  seem  that  Amos  and  Hosea, 
prophets  of  the  eighth  century  B.C.,  were  acquainted 
with  Deuteronomy.  Compare  Hosea  iv.  4  with  Deu- 
teronomy xvii.  12;  and  Hosea  iv.  14  with  Deuteronomy 
xxiii.  18;  and  Hosea  v.  10  with  Deuteronomy  xix. 
14;  also  Amos  iv.  4  with  Deuteronomy  xiv.  28. 

Jeremiah  also  was  acquainted  with  the  law  of 
centralization  of  worship,  for  he  tells  us  that  Jehovah 
set  his  name  in  Shiloh  before  the  choice  of  Jerusalem 
(chap.  vii.  12),  which  corresponds  with  what  we  read 
in  1  Samuel  i.-iii.,  where  Shiloh  actually  appears  as 


126  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  central  sanctuary.  Elkanah  betakes  himself 
there  year  by  year  in  order  to  pray  and  ofiFer  sacrifice, 
and  all  the  people  resort  there  to  ofifer  sacrifice,  and 
the  sons  of  Eli  stand  in  a  relation  to  all  Israel. 
There  also  was  the  ark  of  the  covenant,  the  pledge 
and  witness  of  the  presence  of  the  God  of  Israel. 

From  this,  as  Wilhelm  Moller  has  pointed  out,  it 
follows  that  the  Deuteronomic  requirement  of  a 
central  sanctuary  was  already  in  force  in  the  time  of 
the  Judges.  The  idea  is  also  certainly  harmonious 
with  the  history  of  the  wanderings  in  the  wilderness 
and  the  passage  of  the  Jordan. 

3.  Another  argument  which  has  much  force  is 
that  this  book,  whether  Deuteronomy  only,  or  the 
entire  Pentateuch,  was  accepted  so  readily  as  au- 
thentic and  authoritative  by  king  and  priests  and 
people.  Though  it  bore  with  such  crushing  weight 
on  the  habits  and  the  life  and  the  worship  both  of 
priests  and  people  —  though  it  touched  their  prop- 
erty and  their  livelihood,  yea  their  very  life,  in  its 
denunciation  of  the  death  penalty  upon  idolaters, 
yet  we  hear  of  no  challenge  of  its  genuineness  as  the 
law  of  God  by  his  servant  Moses.  The  modern 
theory  requires  us  to  make  two  assumptions,  of  very 
doubtful  validity :  first,  that  such  a  colossal  deception 
as  the  theory  postulates  should  be  undertaken  by 
good  men,  in  the  fear  of  God;  and  second,  that  it 
should  meet  with  such  complete  and  unchallenged 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  127 

success.  Dean  Milman  says  with  great  force,  "It 
would  have  been  inconceivable  audacity  in  the 
priesthood,  and  equally  inconceivable  blindness  and 
stupidity  in  the  king  and  people,  to  have  been 
imposed  upon  by  a  book  written  but  a  few  years 
before,  and  now  presented  and  received  by  them 
as  the  ancient  and  authoritative  Law."  (History 
of  the  Jews,  Vol.  I,  Bk.  VIII,  Note,  p.  435.  Fourth 
edition.) 

4.  Then  again  we  are  to  consider  the  complexion 
of  the  narrative  of  Deuteronomy,  the  tone  and  color 
of  the  events  it  describes,  the  marks  of  a  time  far 
more  antique  in  manners  than  the  time  of  Josiah; 
we  are  to  ask  ourselves  whether  the  atmosphere  we 
breathe  here  is  not  the  atmosphere  of  the  desert 
rather  than  of  the  great  city,  whether  the  dress  and 
bearing  of  the  characters  that  move  on  this  stage 
do  not  bespeak  an  earlier,  a  more  primitive  time 
rather  than  that  of  the  dwellers  in  a  great  city  in  a 
highly  developed  stage  of  civilization. 

It  is  said,  indeed,  by  some  critics  that  this  veri- 
similitude is  not  real,  but  assumed :  —  the  late  writer 
has  clothed  his  book  in  Mosaic  garb;  he  has  given 
it  the  appearance  of  antiquity,  and  by  this  means 
he  was  able  to  impose  it  upon  king  and  people  as 
indeed  the  work  of  the  great  lawgiver. 

But  before  accepting  that  as  a  probable  supposi- 
tion, we  have  to  consider,  over  and  above  the  moral 


128  THE  PENTATEUCH 

improbability  of  such  a  gross  deception,  whether  it 
would  have  been  possible  for  a  writer  of  Josiah's 
time  to  so  perfectly  simulate  the  time  and  the 
manners  and  the  spirit  of  the  Mosaic  age  as  the 
author  of  Deuteronomy  has  done.  Remember  that 
there  lay  a  tract  of  more  than  eight  centuries  between 
him  and  the  age  into  which  he  was  to  throw  back 
his  composition.  His  task  was,  on  the  supposition 
of  these  critics,  similar  to  that  of  a  romancer  of  our 
day  who  should  undertake  to  write  a  book  which 
should  reproduce  the  life,  and  the  language,  and 
the  manners,  and  the  thought  of  the  age  of  William 
the  Conqueror,  and  to  do  this  without  being  betrayed 
into  anachronisms,  or  geographical  or  other  inaccu- 
racies, above  all  without  failing  to  give  to  his  picture 
the  tone  and  color  of  the  time.  Only  his  work  would 
be  unspeakably  more  difficult,  for,  unlike  the  writer 
of  our  day,  he  could  not  draw  upon  the  stored 
treasures  of  archaeology  in  some  great  library  to 
secure  himself  against  erroneous  conceptions  of  the 
age  he  was  seeking  to  picture.  I  avail  myself  here 
again  of  the  language  of  Dean  Milman : 

"Strange,"  says  he,  "if  a  late  imaginative 
writer  should  preserve  this  singular  accuracy  — 
if  I  may  so  say,  this  naturalness  of  detail  .  .  . 
Read  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  and  fairly  estimate 
the  difficulties  which  occur  —  and  that  there  are 
difficulties  I  acknowledge,  such  as  the  appointment 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  129 

at  this  time  of  Ebal  and  Gerizim  as  the  scene  of 
the  rehearsal  of  the  Law  by  Moses,  or  a  writer  on 
the  other  side  of  Jordan,  .  .  .  though  one  cannot 
suppose  Moses  or  the  IsraeUtes  at  that  time  unac- 
quainted with  the  main  features,  the  general  topog- 
raphy of  Cis-Jordanic  Palestine.  Then  read  it 
again,  and  endeavor  to  assign  it  to  any  other  period 
in  the  Jewish  annals,  and  judge  whether  difficulties 
do  not  accumulate  twenty-fold.  In  this  case,  how 
would  the  signs  of  that  period  have  inevitably  ap- 
peared —  anachronisms,  a  later  tone  of  thought,  of 
incident,  of  manners!  Even  at  this  special  point, 
at  what  period  would  Ebal  and  Gerizim  have  been 
chosen  as  the  two  equal  antagonistic  centers  of 
Jewish  reverence  and  sanctity  ?  If  it  is  a  fiction,  it 
is  certainly  a  most  felicitous  one."     {Id.  p.  253.) 

5.  Yet  again.  The  antiquity  of  Deuteronomy 
has  striking  external  support  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
found  as  one  of  the  books  of  the  Samaritan  Penta- 
teuch. Would  the  Samaritans  have  accepted  a  new 
book  —  never  heard  of  till  the  reign  of  Josiah,  a 
monarch  of  the  rival  kingdom  of  Judah  —  accepted 
such  a  book,  I  say,  and  placed  it  among  their  sacred 
books  of  the  Law?  Wlien  we  consider  the  acute 
jealousy  between  the  Jews  and  the  Samaritans,  is 
it  not  far  more  likely  that  they  would  have  rejected 
it,  and  proclaimed  themselves  the  guardians  of  the 
purity  of  the  Law  against  the  Jewish  innovators  ? 


130  THE  PENTATEUCH 

Other  particulars  of  a  like  nature  might  be  men- 
tioned, if  time  allowed,  as  the  fact  that  in  Chron.  xxiii. 
1-8  —  the  laws  for  the  admission  of  strangers  and 
aliens  —  Edom  is  mentioned  as  the  most  favored 
nation,  whereas  from  the  time  of  David  onwards 
Edom  was  one  of  Judah's  bitterest  enemies.  Surely 
a  writer  of  Josiah's  time  would  not  have  expressed 
a  feeling  of  brotherhood  for  a  people  whom  the 
psalmists  and  prophets  uniformly  denounced  as  a 
cruel  enemy!  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  omis- 
sions which  must  be  held  very  strange  on  the  hy- 
pothesis of  the  origin  of  the  book  in  the  seventh 
century.  We  find  in  it,  for  instance,  no  mention  of 
the  great  kingdoms  of  Syria,  Assyria,  and  Babylon, 
with  which  the  later  fortunes  of  Judah  and  Israel 
were  so  closely  associated,  but  we  do  find  a  reference 
to  Egypt,  and  to  Edom,  Moab,  and  Ammon,  which 
are  associated  with  the  time  of  Moses.  Neither  do 
we  find  any  allusion  to  the  great  schism  which  rent 
the  twelve  tribes  asunder  in  the  reign  of  Rehoboam, 
but  everywhere  the  unity  of  the  nation  is  taken  for 
granted,  and  its  religious  unity  as  well.  Such  are 
some  of  the  grounds  upon  which  the  antiquity  and 
historical  reliability  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
are  reasonably  supported. 

Reviewing  the  whole  argument,  let  me  state 
clearly  what  we  claim  has  been  established  by  the 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  131 

scholars  who  contest  the  modern  view  of  Deute- 
ronomy. We  do  not  claim  that  all  the  difficulties 
marshaled  with  so  much  skill  by  the  advocates  of 
that  view  have  been  met.  But  our  claim  is  that 
the  most  important  of  them  have  been  cleared  up, 
and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  the  difficulties  of  the 
modern  view  are  far  greater  —  are,  in  fact,  in- 
superable. In  some  of  its  cardinal  points  the 
argument  for  it  has  been  shown  to  have  completely 
broken  down.  Now  we  insist  that  nothing  but 
clear  and  conclusive  proof  will  suffice  to  establish 
a  view  which,  like  this,  demands  a  radical  and 
revolutionary  change  in  the  belief  of  the  Christian 
Church  respecting  the  antiquity,  and  therefore  the 
authority,  of  one  of  the  venerable  books  of  the 
Bible.  Such  proof  its  advocates  have  most  cer- 
tainly not  produced,  and  till  they  have  produced 
it,  their  hypothesis  can  have  no  claim  to  displace 
the  long  settled  belief  of  the  Church.  I  think,  how- 
ever, a  dispassionate  review  of  the  respective  argu- 
ments, merely  on  their  merits,  must  lead  to  the 
conclusion  that  apart  from  the  immense  weight  of 
the  tradition  of  two  thousand  years,  the  balance  of 
probability  is  immensely  against  the  modern  view. 

I  hope  what  has  been  urged  in  these  Lectures 
may  convey  a  fair  idea  of  some  of  the  reasons  which 
appear  to  me  to  justify  one  in  hesitating  to  accept 


132  THE  PENTATEUCH 

the  view  of  Jewish  history  and  literature  now  so 
popular  among  the  critics.  I  have  sought  to  show 
as  well  as  my  narrow  limits  would  allow  that 
an  unlearned  Christian  may  still  keep  his  Bible, 
as  the  record  of  revelation  and  of  a  divinely  guided 
history  of  the  chosen  people,  without  disloyalty  to 
truth  and  without  justly  incurring  the  charge  of 
shutting  out  the  light  which  scholarship  has  to  offer. 
On  the  whole,  we  find  ourselves  in  pretty  good 
scholarly  company  when  we  withhold  our  assent 
from  the  elaborate  and  pretentious  theories  which 
turn  the  Biblical  writings  upside  down  —  placing 
the  prophets  before  the  Law  —  and,  "  with  all  the 
paraphernalia  of  erudition,"  emasculate  the  early 
history  of  Israel  of  all  historical  truth,  as  well  as  of 
all  supernatural  significance.  We  need  not  yet  dis- 
miss Abraham,  the  father  of  the  faithful,  from  the 
stage  of  history  as  a  personification  of  Hebrew 
national  tradition.  We  need  not  yet  resolve  the 
beautiful  story  of  Joseph  into  an  astral  myth.  We 
need  not  yet  lose  from  the  goodly  fellowship  of  the 
prophets  the  majestic  figure  of  Moses,  the  leader 
and  lawgiver  of  the  chosen  people,  nor  identify 
Caleb,  the  faithful,  with  the  dog  star  Sirius.^     We 

>  Assyriologists  like  Winckler  will  have  it  that  the  religion  of 
Israel  sprang  from  Babylonian  mythology.  Jacob's  twelve  sons 
represent  the  twelve  signs  of  the  zodiac;  Saul  and  Jonathan  the 
constellation  Gemini;  David  is  a  solar  hero,  his  red  hair  an 
image  of  the  rays  of  the  sun,  while  Goliath  represents  Orion. 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  133 

may  still  without  shame  decline  to  believe  the 
latest  theory  of  the  Assyrological  higher  critics, 
that  the  whole  ancient  Biblical  history  is  "a  mere 
flimsy  plagiarism  of  Babylonian  myths  "  —  a  mere 
"perversion  of  Chaldean  legends." 

In  conclusion,  let  me  say  that  the  assurance  of 
even  so  devout  and  erudite  a  scholar  as  Dr.  Driver, 
that  the  moral  and  devotional  value  of  the  Old 
Testament  remains  unaffected  by  the  popular  critical 
views,  has  not  been  forgotten,  but  it  fails  to  allay 
our  apprehensions  of  the  baleful  influence  of  those 
views  upon  the  public  mind  both  as  regards  the  Old 
and  the  New  Testament.*  It  may  not  be  amiss  — 
we  hope  it  is  not  invidious  —  to  recall  the  fact  that 
Strauss  gave  the  Christian  world  a  similar  assur- 

1 A  modern  scholar  of  high  repute,  in  a  volume  published 
since  this  Lecture  was  written,  says:  "With  the  best  will  in  the 
world  to  accept  whatever  new  light  criticism  may  have  to  throw 
on  the  structure  and  meaning  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  author 
has  to  confess  that  his  study  of  the  critical  developments  —  now 
for  over  thirty  years  —  has  increasingly  convinced  him  that, 
while  BibUcal  students  are  indebted  to  the  critics,  and  to 
Old  Testament  science  generally,  for  valuable  help,  the  Graf- 
Wellhausen  hypothesis  now  in  the  ascendant  is,  neither  in  its 
methods  nor  in  its  results,  entitled  to  the  unqualified  confidence 
often  claimed  for  it.  He  is  persuaded,  on  the  contrary,  that  it 
I  rests  on  erroneous  fundamental  principles,  is  eaten  through  with 
\  subjectivity,  and  must,  if  carried  out  to  its  logical  issues  —  to 
/  which,  happily,  very  many  do  not  carry  it  —  prove  subversive  of 
our  Christian  faith."  —  The  Problem  of  the  Old  Testament, 
Jas.  Orr,  D.D.    Preface,  p.  xv. 


134  THE  PENTATEUCH 

ance  in  the  preface  to  his  "  Leben  Jesu  "  (1835).  All 
the  great  facts  and  doctrines  of  Christianity  were, 
he  declared,  entirely  unaffected  by  his  criticism; 
but  in  the  end,  when  his  criticism  had  come  to  its 
fruitage  in  his  second  Life  of  Christ,  a  generation 
later,  the  futility  of  that  assurance  was  plainly  seen, 
for  not  one  of  the  distinctive  doctrines  of  Christianity 
remained. 

There  is  no  question  that  the  more  advanced 
wing  of  the  critical  army  have  waxed  bold  even  to 
arrogance  in  the  advocacy  of  views  that  are  destruc- 
tive of  faith  in  the  divine  origin  and  authority  of 
the  Holy  Scriptures,  both  of  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testament.  If  any  proof  were  demanded  that  the 
tendency  of  the  criticism  here  under  review  is  to 
the  serious  prejudice  of  faith  and  the  disintegration 
of  Christian  doctrine,  it  were  enough  to  point  to  the 
Encyclopcedia  Biblica,  and  to  remind  the  reader  that 
it  is  edited  by  a  dignitary  of  the  English  Church. 
Certainly  no  one  can  thoughtfully  survey  the  world 
of  religious  thought  without  perceiving  that  there 
is  a  strong  current  of  thought,  making  itself  widely 
felt,  which  is  distinctly  antagonistic  to  recognizing 
in  Jesus  of  Nazareth  the  Christ  of  the  Christian 
ages,  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 
And  it  is  as  little  doubtful  that  the  destructive 
criticism,  which  has  so  seriously  disintegrated  the 
Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament,  has  a 


AND  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM  135 

very  close  connection  with  that  anti-Christian  spirit. 
It  is  partly  its  cause,  and  partly  its  consequence:  it 
produces  unbelief,  and  in  turn  is  produced  by  it. 

To  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen  Jesus  was  a  great 
religious  genius  —  the  greatest  in  history  —  the 
purest  interpreter  of  God  to  man  that  ever  lived  — 
but  yet  not  the  Son  of  God  in  the  sense  of  the 
Christian  Church.  He  calls  himself  the  Son  of  God 
"not  because  he  is  of  a  unique  nature,  but  because 
he  is  a  man"  (Wellhausen).  To  Dr.  Driver  and 
Dr.  Robertson  Smith,  on  the  other  hand,  Jesus  is 
possessed  of  absolute  Godhead.  But  the  question 
is  not  of  the  beliefs  of  particular  theologians,  but  of 
the  tendency  of  the  system  they  hold.  And  I 
frankly  avow  my  belief  that  the  history  of  the 
advanced  Higher  Criticism  for  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  justifies  the  belief  that  it  tends  to  destroy 
faith  in  the  divine  origin  of  the  Scriptures,  in  the 
truth  of  the  New  Testament  history,  and  ultimately 
in  the  divine  authority  and  the  divine  nature  of 
Jesus  Christ.^ 

*  Dr.  James  Orr,  in  the  conelusion  of  his  admirable  work, 
writes  in  similar  strain: 

"The  storm  of  criticism  which,  in  the  last  decades,  assailed 
the  Old  Testament,  was  fondly  thought  by  many  to  leave 
intact  the  New  Testament.  What  mattered  it  about  Abraham 
and  Moses,  so  long  as  Jesus  and  His  Gospel  remained.  That 
delusion  is  passing  away.  .  .  .  The  principles  of  a  rationalistic 
criticism,  having  once  gained  recognition  and  approval  in  the 


136  THE  PENTATEUCH 

The  danger  is  a  very  real  one.  It  is  to  be  met, 
however,  not  by  putting  barriers  in  the  way  of  free 
inquiry,  but  by  training  up  scholars  in  Biblical 
science  who  shall  be  able  to  meet  the  destructive 
critics  on  their  own  ground,  and  overcome  them 
with  their  own  weapons.  It  is  a  matter  of  profound 
thankfulness  that  there  is  already  a  goodly  company 
of  scholars  equipped  for  this  work,  and  it  has  been 
one  of  the  chief  purposes  of  what  I  have  written  to 
direct  attention  to  their  able  vindication  of  the  truth 
of  the  Scriptures. 

Let  me  in  conclusion  express  the  conviction  that 
as  the  work  of  true  Criticism  is  tested  by  time,  and 
purified  in  the  alembic  of  a  yet  riper  and  more 
reverent  scholarship,  the  Church  will  be  more  and 
more  its  debtor.  Truth  is  a  fire  which  will  consume 
the  wood  and  the  hay  and  the  stubble,  both  of  the 
critics  and  of  the  theologians,  but  the  gold  and 
the  silver  and  the  precious  stones  —  the  eternal 
verities  of  God's  revelation  —  will  come  out  of  the 
furnace  unharmed,  not  even  the  smell  of  fire  upon 
them,  brighter  and  more  resplendent  than  ever. 

region  of  the  Old  Testament,  are  now  being  transferred  and 
applied  with  increasing  boldness  and  vigour  to  the  New,  with 
the  result  that  it  is  rapidly  coming  to  be  assumed  that  only  a 
Christ  from  whom  all  supernatural  traits  are  stripped  off  can 
be  accepted  as  historical  by  the  'modem  mind'  ...  A  grave 
peril  has  thus  arisen."  —  The  Problem  of  the  Old  Testament, 
p.  477-8. 


DATE  DUE 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.S.A. 

BS1160.M15 

The  problem  of  the  Pentateuch;  an 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00011   7988 


